


The Other Side

by OddAmity



Category: Story Break Podcast
Genre: Chickens, Gen, Original Character(s), Podcast, chickens are cool right?, love em
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2020-07-25 16:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20029003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddAmity/pseuds/OddAmity
Summary: Why DID the chicken cross the road? Dr. Braden Werner aims to find out, even if it kills him. Especially if it kills him.***Based on the Story Break podcast's episode #38 "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?" You do NOT need to have listened to the episode, but it is a rather good episode.





	1. The Man in the Upstairs Apartment

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on [my favorite episode of the Story Break podcast](https://www.maximumfun.org/story-break/story-break-why-did-chicken-cross-road)  
As such the story itself is unoriginal but the words are all mine. I just took the idea because I loved it so much and needed to see it put together in some form even if, dang it, I had to do it myself. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Also, shoutout to [Mark Rantal](https://twitter.com/MarkRantal/status/949690864346918912) for coming up with the awesome title that I shamelessly stole.

“Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creatures in the world.”

\- Werner Herzog

“Men and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension.”

\- W. G. Sebald

Braden Werner had deduced, after much deliberation, that mid-April was when he was going to die.

He had bought a tasteful funeral plot on a hill overlooking the sea, picked out his best suit to wear in the coffin, and written his will which, as he had no relatives, was very short and to the point:

_My belongings are personal, irreplaceable, and expensive and as such would do better in a museum than stuffed into the basement along with your board games and rotted newspaper clippings, Madame Poulin, if you would be so kind. Also, tell your ungrateful son that if he so much as scuffs the kitchen tile in my apartment, I will personally return to snap every last one of those CDs of his, to rid the world of that awful racket he insists on calling “music.” _

_Regards,_

_B. D. Werner_

A funeral seemed to him a rather unnecessary affair, so instead of invitations Werner had procured simple announcement cards. It was these that he took down to the small grocery store below his apartment, and it was there that he planned for his story to begin to end.

“Morning, Monsieur Werner!” The powerful, cheery voice of the store’s owner, Madame Poulin, easily reached him as he descended the spiral stairs at the back of the shop. Poulin was a honey baked ham of a woman: thick, sweet, and too much for him to stomach. Her golden curls sat atop a red, freckled face and her surprisingly dainty fingers could hoist three full sacks of flour onto her shoulder like they were swan-feather pillows. Werner’s gray mustache slanted in a frown as he approached the counter.

“It’s _Doctor_ Werner, Madame. As I believe I’ve told you before.”

“Yes, yes,” she agreed with a good-natured sigh. She looked up from where she was counting change in the till and smiled. “But here in France ‘_Docteur’ _is really more for those in the medical field. Not… what was it again? Geology?”

“Biology,” he corrected, annoyed. “And I am German, not French, so if you would please—”

“That’s right! Biology! How could I forget with all those skeletons of yours?”

“Specimens.”

“I’ve already got your groceries set aside here, Monsieur,” she said. “My husband baked the bread just this morning. Give me a moment to finish counting and I’ll ring you up.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Werner pulled out the cards. They were modest, with a simple twisting outline surrounding his name and a small picture of him as a slightly younger man at the top. He handed her the stack.

“I’d like you to mail these out to the addressees, Madame, when the time comes.”

She took them and read aloud.

“To whom it may concern: the prestigious Docteur B. D. Werner is, as of _blank _April, two-thousand eighteen, dead.”

She flipped it to see the back, then looked up at Werner with a tilt of the head. “That’s all it says.”

“Correct.”

“Ah.” She flipped it again to stare at the front. “We’re _in_ April.”

“Correct.”

The woman looked, for the first time, a touch uncomfortable. Through the door leading into the back kitchen, her husband appeared. He was just about the opposite of his wife in every way – tall, thin, and dark haired – but he smiled a greeting with the same incessant cheer. “Ah, Monsieur! Good morning!” Behind him their son, Alan, slipped past, heading for the fresh baked goods. He was a young man almost the spitting image of his father, with hair that was too long, in Werner’s opinion, and a black hoodie with black pants. _Why must he insist on wearing his hood up indoors_? Werner thought. _No respect_.

“I hope you’re planning on paying for that, Alan.” Monsieur Poulin scolded, smiling even as he wagged his finger at his son’s back. He turned to Werner. “So, how’s the funeral planning going, Monsieur?”

“Doctor,” he corrected. “And I’ve finished.”

The man blinked and his son turned around, raising an eyebrow. He had a croissant in his mouth.

“I…see,” Monsieur Poulin said. “Then what now?”

“Now,” Doctor Werner said, turning back to the stairs, “I wait.”

He ascended the metal steps with the family’s eyes on his back, and could still feel them long after he closed his apartment door behind him.

Madame and Monsieur Poulin shared a glance. Their son bit off a chunk of croissant and chewed thoughtfully.

“Surely he’s joking,” Monsieur Poulin offered.

“Well, the cards _are _embossed,” Madame Poulin admitted. “And it’s not as if he gets up to much, staying in that room day and night.”

The Poulin family had lived under Doctor Werner’s apartment for almost a decade and still knew little about the man other than his name and the brief glance Madame Poulin had gotten of his entryway one morning. It had consisted of several bird skeletons in glass cases and an ornate Persian rug over the polished wood floors, which meant that he was not only an odd old man, but an odd old man with taste, literal skeletons in the closet, and a surprising amount of flexibility to scrub even the most remote of corners. Though he insisted on the title of doctor, he rarely talked about what his work had entailed before he retired and never stepped foot outside of the building. Madame Poulin worried. Monsieur Poulin worried. Alan Poulin finished his croissant. He flicked the crumbs from his hoodie into the bin, then looked back up at the metal stairs, eyebrows raised.

He said, “Does this mean I finally get the apartment?”

Doctor Werner’s apartment _was_ rather impressive. The kitchen tiles were warm red hexagons and the gray cupboards were carved with delicate floral patterns. The countertops were wood-paneled – rustic but still stylish. Copper pots and pans hung from rods on the wall beside the window above the sink, where a warm breeze ruffled the green curtains every morning. The living room floors had the same polished light-brown wood of the entryway, complete with different pieces of furniture from all over the world and several specimens artfully arranged along tabletops and walls. Puffins and razorbills and herons and albatross and petrels and storks and penguins – as well as several species of seabird that had long been extinct. They dominated the apartment. One wall, however, was dedicated to books.

Leather tomes lined the shelves. Books by Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Gregor Mendel, Rachel Carson, and more. Though they were worn from heavy reading, they were the only things in the house to have gathered any dust. All except for the handful located on a small shelf above the doctor’s desk. These were pristine. The man ran his veined hands over their spines as he passed, tracing his finger over the names. _Braden Werner _and_ Célia Werner. _He went to the bathroom.

In the mirror a pair of sunken green eyes peeked over his small glasses. He studied the layered geography of his wrinkles, the spots along his forehead, the slight droop of his jowls, with a sense of satisfaction. His estimation was spot on; he looked like he could keel over within the hour, much less the week. About time, too.

Werner slipped his pill bottle out of his pocket, twisted the lid off, and, after taking a moment to study the contents, tipped them into the toilet. He flushed.

“Well,” he said. “That’s that.”

He reentered the living room, glancing at the clock on the wall. It read a little after 4 in the morning, but it always ran slow. He’d meant to fix that, but his watch worked just fine and he hated getting the stepstool out.

He opened the doors to his small balcony and settled into the cushioned chair to the side. Below him cars ran along the road, everyone busy to get somewhere even early in the morning. He watched as Alan Poulin replaced his hood with a helmet and sped off on his motorbike. He _claimed _he had a job. Werner always suspected he went to some seedy den to waste his parents’ hard earned money gambling or drinking or doing drugs or getting tattoos or whatever irresponsible nonsense was considered the latest trend now-a-days. He rolled his eyes and checked his watch. 7:42.

Still not dead.

Just how long was this going to take?

Werner forced himself to relax into the chair, tapping his fingers along the armrest. He studied the surrounding landscape, the tiled roofs of Paris homes encircling his small corner of the city. Far off in the distance, if Werner squinted, he could almost imagine catching a sparkling blue glimpse of the ocean. It was ludicrous, of course. He was nowhere near the coast. Werner had moved to Paris _in order _to be nowhere near the coast. There was nothing Werner hated more than the ocean.

Célia, however, had loved it.

The bushes under his balcony shuddered.

Werner blinked and looked down. They were the unruly hedges he was always snapping at the Poulins to trim down, thick branches lush with rubbery green leaves. And the leaves were moving.

He watched with the vaguest of interest as they rustled, then he heard the distinct, oddly guttural sound... of a cluck.

A chicken emerged from the bush.

It wasn’t so odd, seeing a chicken. Lots of people had them in their yards for the fresh eggs and he’d often complained about roosters crowing at odd hours of the day – because they rarely made that incessant sound at daybreak, like they were supposed to, and God forbid he get any actual rest when he tried to take a nap. This chicken, however, looked out of place in the small parking lot of the Poulin General Store. It was almost completely white, with a few black tailfeathers and a cherry red upright comb and it walked with an odd amount of purpose. He could almost hear its talons clicking against the brick as it made its way to the road.

A sports car (red, of course, they were always red, weren’t they?) careened down the pavement, not so much _taking_ the turn as stealing it, tires screeching in protest as it rocketed down the road. Werner expected the chicken to run off in the other direction, or, stupid as the birds were, to keep walking right into the car’s path and meet an untimely end. Instead, as soon as the bird met the start of the road, it stopped.

The car rushed past, not but an inch from the chicken’s tiny white beak. Feathers ruffled, but the bird otherwise remained perfectly still. It continued to wait as more cars passed then, as soon as there was an opening, sprinted across the road.

Werner watched, interested in spite of himself, as it made it to the other side and slipped under the small picket fence and into the overgrowth.

“Huh,” Werner grunted. He checked his watch. 7:57. Still not dead.

He sighed and closed his eyes, letting the wind ruffle his thin gray hair. Within minutes he was asleep, and the chicken was all but forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name Poulin, in case you were wondering, is an old French name that means "chicken," because I can do whatever the heck I want.


	2. Understanding the Minds of Birds

Doctor Werner stared at the paper bag with distaste.

As if it wasn’t enough that he’d woken up that morning with a sore back and, most irritatingly, a _pulse_, when he’d opened his front door he’d had the misfortune of discovering that Madame Poulin had taken the time to leave a bag of groceries on his doormat. Much about this irked him. One, he’d said the day before that he hadn’t wanted it and he disliked being ignored. Two, even if he _had _changed his mind, he was perfectly capable of descending the stairs and getting his groceries himself because, contrary to his wishes, he was rather fit in his old age. Three, there was more food in the bag than was necessary for survival, such as a chocolate bar, fresh marmalade, and madeleines. And four, the madame had left a note attached in big, swooping cursive.

_Dear <strike>Monsieur</strike> Docteur Werner,_

_Good morning! I know you’re working quite hard at dying, but that does not mean you have to do it on an empty stomach! Consider this on the house, and please feel free to come down for more. It’s always a pleasure to talk with you. _

_With love,_

_Amélie Poulin_

Werner was _not _a pleasure to talk with and he was rather offended with the insinuation that he was. As he took the bag inside, cut and toasted slices from the loaf of bread, and sat down at his table to spread the marmalade, he grumbled all the while. It didn’t help that both the bread and marmalade were very good. Rich and flavorful, as all homemade foods given enough care and attention should be. He glared at his slow clock as he chewed. It read almost 5:00am, meaning almost 8:00am, meaning another morning he’d have to spend on this blasted earth with his blasted neighbors in his blasted apartment overlooking that blasted sea that wasn't even really blasted _there_ with_ that blasted music playing_!

Werner threw his toast down on the plate and stood, moving to the balcony. Below, the window of Alan Poulin’s room was open, and from it spewed a noise which Werner would generously have called the ‘poisonous screeches of electric guitars run through five layers of grease.’ A voice that could’ve been a man or could’ve been a woman squawked unintelligible words in some parody of singing, and he could feel the thump of crashing drums reverberate at his feet like they were working to reduce the whole building to rubble.

“Poulin!” Werner yelled, leaning over the railing to look down at the window. “Young man, you turn that racket down! It’s _eight_ in the _morning_!”

Alan Poulin’s head appeared a moment later, his black hood slipping off as he looked up. His smile was not nearly as pleasant as those of his parents. It had more edge. More bite.

“Still not dead, huh?” he called.

Werner’s frown deepened. “Who could die with all this racket?! Turn it down this instant!”

“It’s just music, gramps.”

“Gramps! I am _not _your ‘gramps,’ young man, and I pity the man who is! He and your father have the misfortune of trying to teach a hoodlum like you some proper manners! Haven’t you anything better to do? Your so called ‘job,’ for instance?”

“It’s my day off. I’m allowed a _day off_, aren’t I?”

“Not if _this _is how you plan to spend it! Harassing old men with your – your – noise!”

“Kind of seems like _you’re _the one who started the conversation and so, if anything, _you’re _the one harassing _me_.”

“You have no right to talk to your elders in such a way, young man! Why, back in my day, I…” Werner trailed off, his eyes sliding away from the young Poulin and to the bushes just past him.

They were moving. Just like the morning before.

Alan followed his gaze, surprised that anything could distract the older man when he was in the middle of one of his tirades, and so became the second person to witness the chicken step from the bush and onto the bricks. He was distinctly less impressed than the doctor. It was, after all, just a chicken.

Alan glanced at Monsieur Werner again, but the old man’s eyes were fixed on the bird. His gnarled hands gripped the balcony railing as he leaned forward – a weathered, crotchety gargoyle guarding the building from evil spirits. Or chickens. Apparently.

“Uh… you know that chicken, gramps?”

“Shh, shh, shh!” he hissed without looking at him. “Watch! Just watch!”

The chicken stopped at the road, waited for a car to pass, then crossed. It disappeared into the bushes on the other side.

“Interesting,” Alan said flatly. But when he looked up, the old man had gone back inside. It was unheard of for him to give up on Alan’s music so easily. He’d been expecting to be lectured for another ten, fifteen minutes at least. It was a nice change, but it was a change none-the-less.

“Interesting,” he said again. And this time he meant it.

The doctor had a commendable collection of books – all first editions, most signed, worn lovingly but not detrimentally, and numbering into the hundreds – and he knew exactly which one he wanted as he all-but-sprinted across his living room. It was small, bound in cheerful bright blue, with the title in bold silver letters and the author’s name in light cursive script at the bottom. Its cover depicted the silhouettes of different birds with a stylized brain in the head of each one.

_Understanding the Minds of Birds_ by Célia Werner.

He ran his fingers over the outlines. Closed his eyes. Took a deep breath like he was tasting air for the first time and wasn’t sure he liked the flavor.

He hadn’t opened this book in thirty years.

“I just want to know why,” he murmured. “That’s it. That’s all I need. Then I put it back down.”

Somewhere in this book was a section on chickens. He remembered it. He just didn’t remember where it was. He ran a thumb under the cover, but couldn't bring himself to flip it over. Back out on the other side of the street, the bushes were still, the chicken’s passing inconsequential. The chicken _was _inconsequential. He was being ridiculous. He didn’t need the book.

But he also didn’t put _down_ the book. 

_This is preposterous_, he scolded himself. _If you’re going to open it, just open it! Open it!_

He did so with the swift, harsh tug of someone ripping off a band-aid.

_“I grew up with the ocean_,” it read. Doctor Werner swallowed. He’d flipped right to the introduction.

_“I grew up with the ocean, but not with the fish. Not with the algae, or the seashells, or the stones on the beach. They were all there, of course, and I loved them right enough. Just as I loved the ice cream vendors and the funny tourists. Just as I loved the sailboats and the flashy swimsuits that seemed scandalous at the time and would be horridly modest now. Just as I loved the waves, and the salty air, and the sand between my toes. But I didn’t grow up with them the same way I grew up with the ocean itself. The same way I grew up with the seabirds…”_

Werner stopped himself. This wasn’t what he needed, and reading any more than necessary felt like a trespass. These words didn’t belong to him, and he had the irrational notion that he if looked at them the wrong way he would do some kind of irreparable damage. Carefully, he backtracked to the table of contents and ran his finger down the line of chapters until he found the one he wanted. He sat down at his desk, thumbed through the pages, and began to read.

** _The Gallic Rooster: A Study of Chickens_ **

** **

_I have a soft spot for chickens._

_What kind of Frenchwoman would I be if I didn’t? The Gallic rooster decorates our stamps, our memorials, our weathervanes, and even the garden gate of our president. Chicken appreciation is in our blood. And it is therefore unheard of for me to write a book about birds and neglect to pay them their due respect._

_But what goes on in the mind of a chicken? Many would argue nothing. The chicken has an unfortunate reputation for stupidity that is wholly unearned but most likely due to our unflappable desire to fricassee them in a thick white sauce. We don’t want to believe that beings we eat on a regular basis can be intelligent. Such ignorance does the chicken a disservice, and it is my belief that one can enjoy a white coq au vin while acknowledging the bird that gave its life for the purpose…_

Werner poured over the chapter, his memories of the first time he read it coming back with surprising clarity. Or rather, of the first time she read it _to _him. He could hear her voice in his head as he relearned about chicken pecking order, communication, REM cycles, and more. By the time he finished the chapter, her voice had fixed in his mind like a long-lost echo and he felt if he turned around there she would be, reading over his shoulder. It was most unsettling.

She was there, in the words, but the rational part of his brain knew that was nonsense. Words were ink on paper. He closed the book, sliding it back into the shelf above his desk, and ran a hand over his face. The purpose of the reading hadn’t been nostalgia – he’d wanted answers, and though he’d received many for questions he _hadn’t _posed, none explained the chicken’s behavior that morning. Where was it going? Chickens didn’t migrate, and even if this one had escaped its pen the day before that didn’t explain why it had appeared in the same parking lot, in the same bush, crossing at the same place, at the _exact same time_.

Werner looked over at his collection of books on the adjacent wall, dusty from lack of care but all holding potential answers…

Perhaps it was best to let it go.

He sighed and stood, going to his abandoned toast at the table and giving it an experimental bite. He grimaced. Far too cold now. Just because he was on death’s door didn’t mean he had no standards. He tossed the old bread away and prepared a new couple slices, silencing his watch when it beeped, reminding him to take pills he no longer had.

If his blood pressure wanted to skyrocket, let it. It would simply speed up the process.

“Hey, so like… does Monsieur Werner have a thing against chickens?”

“I’m sorry?” Madame Poulin restocked the spices while she talked, never one to sit still even for a moment. She glanced at her son over her shoulder. “Chickens? Why would he?”

“Well…” Alan leaned back against the counter and fiddled with the cup of pens next to the register. “There was this chicken. I dunno. It was weird.”

“The chicken?”

“No, the old man. I’d never seen him look like that before.”

“Like what?”

Alan shook his head. “I dunno,” he repeated.

Madame Poulin laughed. “Well, you’re being crystal clear today, dear. I’m sure the man is fine. As fine as he can be, anyhow. Did you check to see if he got the groceries?”

“Yeah, yeah. He got ‘em. You should’ve made him pay, though. The guy’s got the cash.”

“He’s in a delicate state right now. He’s convinced he’s going to die.”

“He _is _gonna die. He’s old.”

“Alan!”

“_Well_,” he shrugged. “At least he’s realistic.”

His mother tutted and slid some cinnamon onto the shelf while Alan clicked and unclicked a pen in time with the faded music leaking out of his room. The expression he’d seen on the old man’s face… it hadn’t been crotchety, or annoyed, or tired, or indifferent, which is what he was used to from him. There’d been a spark in his eyes. It was the first time Alan had seen the man display a genuine interest in, well, anything.

“He looked…” Alan eyed the metal stairs leading up to the apartment. “He looked…”

_Curious_, Werner thought as he selected another book, blowing dust off the top. _That’s all I am. Just a little curious. So, I’ll get the answer to this, then I’ll put the books back, and then I’ll die. Simple. To the point. Easy. _He went back to the desk, which was at this point piled high in a half dozen stacks of books, and scooched them over to make room for the newest addition.

He couldn’t be sure what he was looking for. He’d brushed up on basic biology first, then dove into the more specific question of travel. He’d studied various migratory patterns and honing abilities, magnetoreception, even echolocation. Chickens _did _have a magnetic compass, same as a carrier pigeon, but weren’t generally thought of as adventurous birds. Which meant that while he could explain the _how_, more or less, but the books refused to give him a _why_.

Werner flipped open the newest book and continued to read.

_Understanding the Minds of Birds _by Célia Werner sat quietly at his side, a bookmark tucked between the pages.


	3. The Crack of Dawn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reviews are in, folks! Here's a brief summary of Story Break's review of my first chapter, found at the end of [this episode](https://twitter.com/rjstorybreak/status/1159568882652340227).  
Will Campos: “It’s f*cking awesome. It’s really really really good. I’m totally excited to see where she goes with it.”  
Matt Arnold: “That’s one of my favorite episodes, that made my day. I was glad that somebody still remembers it.”  
Will Campos: “That would be a shorter movie to write, f*ck we should’ve done that one.”  
And so we continue...

_Let’s begin with daybreak._

Werner had planted himself in his balcony chair, facing the bush, the blue-gray quiet of early morning pressing its dewy fingers into his skin. Rather than the simple turtleneck and slacks he usually wore, the doctor had on a tweed suit: gray, herringbone-patterned, and a size too big. He’d shriveled a bit over the years, but it was the only jacket he had with an inner pocket big enough to hold Célia’s book, which sat open on his lap.

_While it is a myth that roosters crow only at the rise of the sun, this theory most likely originated from the fact that roosters and chickens in general see the sunrise before we do. Human beings have three cones in their eyes to perceive the colors red, green, and blue – but chickens have an additional cone for seeing ultraviolet light and, while we’re on the subject, a fifth cone to give them a heightened sense of motion detection. Eyesight plays an important role in their lives. As they have poor night vision, they need to know as soon as possible when the sun is coming up and going down so they have time to avoid predators. Is it any wonder, then, that they would be so excited for the new day?_

As the yellow sun leaked into the clouds, Werner thumbed through the book, side-eyeing the bush all the while. The last two times, the chicken hadn’t arrived until about an hour after sunrise, but as he was an early-riser anyhow he saw no reason not to make certain the pattern held true.

Not that there was much of a pattern. _Two days _did not make a pattern. It was entirely possible – no, not possible, but _likely _– that the chicken wouldn’t show up at all. That it was simply a strange phenomenon of no consequence meant only to irritate an old man on a balcony.

He buttoned his jacket against the cold and waited.

The bird arrived right on schedule.

After Alan Poulin had departed on his motorbike and as Werner finished the chicken chapter once again, the bush began twitching. Werner held his breath. If asked, the doctor would deny the way he learned forward. The way one hand gripped the arm of his chair and the other clutched at Célia’s book. The lump he swallowed in his throat. He would deny everything – or perhaps it was that he didn’t notice any of it, so focused was he on the simple act of a chicken stepping out of a bush. Which it did. For the third time.

“_Why_?!” Werner breathed. He didn’t register that he’d left his seat until he was rushing through his apartment door and down the spiral stairs into the storefront.

“Monsieur Werner!” Madame Poulin said, surprised. She was putting out the bread for the day as he slipped through the aisles. “What has you so excited?”

“It’s _Doctor_, Madame,” he said, heading for the front door.

She nearly dropped her tray of rolls. “Wait a moment, are you _leaving?_”

“Just popping out for a bit!”

“But you haven’t left the building since –”

The bell above the door jingled as he departed.

“Since… ever…”

Her husband entered the room, carrying a tray of bread loaves. He looked around.

“Could’ve sworn I heard our neighbor,” he said.

“You did.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, where did he go?”

“Out.”

The man’s eyebrows shot up. “Out?”

Madame Poulin shook her head, blond curls bobbing. Her smile was soft, faint, and more than a little confused. She shrugged. “Out.”

Monsieur Poulin slid his tray onto the shelf, catching a glimpse of the man’s departure through the window. He put his hands on his hips.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

The chicken was already halfway across the road when Werner reached the parking lot. He didn’t allow himself to stop and think – he just followed.

_HOOOOOOOOOONK_!

A red car, top down, swerved to avoid Werner as he stepped into the street. The man driving swung his head over his shoulder.

“Watch where you’re going, old man!”

“Slow down before you kill someone!” Werner snapped, shaking a fist. The man gave him a more specific hand signal in return and screeched around a corner, but Werner had already refocused on the path ahead, determined not to lose the chicken as it disappeared under the fence. When he got to the other side, he swung his leg over the wooden posts, for once wishing he were a just little nimbler. He grunted as he hauled himself over and stumbled as he landed. In the back of his mind was the knowledge that small pebbles had found their way into his shoes, but at the front was one simple objective, and that objective was “_onward_.”

He tucked Celia’s book into the pocket of his jacket and followed the chicken into the underbrush. With stark white feathers against the landscape of greens, yellows, and browns, it wasn’t hard to keep tabs on the bird. This left Werner with plenty of time to argue with himself.

_What is the point of this?_ he thought. _You have better things to be doing._

_Like what?_ he challenged. _Dying?_

_Namely, yes. It takes a good deal of focus._

_I just want to know where it’s going. There’s no harm in that._

_No harm except for the fact that this feels an awful lot like science._

_It’s only science if I write anything down. Otherwise it’s simply… observation. Curiosity. _

_Betrayal._

Werner sniffed irritably, unsure which part of himself he was more annoyed by, and pushed a branch out of his way to reveal a stone walking path. The chicken slipped out of the grass and onto it, strutting down into the beginnings of a shopping district.

There were bakeries, new and used bookstores, restaurants, cafés, confectionaries, antique shops, and more, all with thoughtfully decorated front windows and gingerbread trimmings in bright yet tastefully subdued colors. The walking path was made of round, dark stones, worn from hundreds of feet, and many buildings had their doors propped open invitingly.

Werner blinked, the reality of what he was doing finally setting in. He hadn’t been out in public in ten, maybe even twenty years. He couldn’t properly remember the last time he stepped out of his building. As the years had slipped by, he’d gone out less and less, until it became unnecessary to go out at all. Although the street was empty so early in the morning, Werner suddenly pictured it full of people, going about their business, bustling to and fro, talking and laughing and bickering. Though it was only in his mind, it was too loud. Far too loud.

The doctor studied his shoes, taking a deep breath.

_You always look down and I always look up_, Célia used to say. _It’s a wonder we don’t run into more walls_.

It wasn’t as if he was incapable of talking to people. He was forced to interact with the Poulins on an annoyingly regular basis and he ran into strangers on the rare occasions he was in the store during business hours. But he felt uncomfortably exposed outside of his home, even steeped in his thick tweed suit. And all for the sake of some—_chicken!_

Werner’s head sprang up. The chicken! He cursed, scanning the street. He couldn’t have been lost in his thoughts for more than half a minute…

There! He caught a flash of white against the dark cobblestones and sprinted to catch up, watching as the chicken shimmied between a gap in a couple of buildings. He needn’t have bothered running; the gap was a foot wide, at most. There was no way he could follow. Werner frowned, stepping back to take in the buildings. The alley was between a cobbler and a florist, only one of which seemed to be open. After a moment of deliberation, he went inside, a small chirp from a motion sensor above the door signaling his arrival. He inhaled damp air heavy with the weight of a hundred different flowers. The store was so full of them he couldn’t see the counter and wasn’t sure there was anyone there until he heard a distant shuffling behind a wall of violets.

“I’m coming!” a voice said. There was a clang as something fell and a muttered swear, then more shuffling. Someone started to round the corner, dusting soil off her green apron.

“You’re early!” she said, smiling brightly, “I was just… Oh.”

The woman was short, remarkably so, and looked to be in her early thirties. She had broad shoulders, a round face, and dark, boy cut hair. Under her apron, her turquoise shirt was sleeveless, revealing a tattoo on her shoulder of a couple of sunflowers. A pair of brass triangle earrings bobbed as her shoulders drooped.

“Sorry,” she said, flushing. “You’re not who I thought you were.”

“I gathered as much,” Werner dismissed with a wave of his hand. “Do you have a back door, by chance?”

She scrunched up her nose. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “It’s not usually open to customers, though.”

“I’ll need to be an exception. I’m in the middle of… an observation.”

“Observation?” she echoed. “What, for some sort of experiment?”

“No,” he frowned, “not for some sort of experiment. I’m following something and it passed by your store and I can’t get to it through the alley. Now take me to your back door before it gets away.”

She put her hands on her hips. “No need to be pushy, Monsieur. You’re in _my _shop.”

“Doctor,” Werner corrected on principle, stepping past the woman to look for the back. He finally spotted the counter, half-buried in potting soil. A watering can had tipped over in front of it, spilling a small flood onto the tile.

“Oh, right!” the woman said, circling around him. “Careful! I don’t want you slipping. Trust me, I’ve done it. Not fun. Not on these floors.” She went behind the counter and grabbed a towel, throwing it over the puddle, and picked up the can. This was when she seemed to register the soil.

“God, what a mess,” she sighed. Werner wondered vaguely what she’d been doing that warranted mounds of dirt on her workspace. There was far too much for a simple repotting procedure.

He didn’t have to wonder long; the woman didn’t seem to know how to breathe without words slipping out on every exhale. “I lost my nametag,” she said, running her hands through the dirt half-heartedly. “I _know _it was when I was planting some flowers out back, but I searched out there and couldn’t find it. I thought maybe it fell into my bag of soil, but so far no good.”

“Riveting,” Werner said. “Now, the back door?”

“Right, right.” She dusted her hands off again and beckoned him to follow. “Just through here. Mind the step.”

The tile floor ended at the doorway, which stepped down into a concrete-lined workshop. Another landscape of loose potting soil decorated the long table against the wall, complete with several emptied bags.

“Once I was running back here to get something for a customer, forgot about the step, and fell spread-eagle onto the floor. Talk about a bloody nose, plus I sprained my ankle. It was a disaster – _and _we were out of that color tissue paper anyway so it was a waste of time to boot.” She reached the door and pushed it open. “Well, here you are.”

Werner was not the gardening sort, but you would have to be blind not to acknowledge how breathtaking the florist’s backyard was. The stone wall circling the perimeter was coated in a thin layer of moss and topped with flowers of a wide range of colors and sizes. In one corner a fountain let out a cheerful trickle, accompanied by a small bench and surrounded by more plants than he could possibly name, all in full bloom. A stepping stone path maneuvered through the yard, bypassing a pond of bright, clear water before stopping at a wooden gate, which was covered in ivy. Sunlight filtered down through the trees in golden beams, dust motes twisting with the slight breeze.

The woman smiled at him, pleased. “Isn’t it something? My own personal getaway.”

Werner did his best to look unimpressed. “It’s fine,” he said, heading to the back gate while she leaned against the doorway. Past the gate a hill led down to a dirt road and into the valley beyond. He stepped out, walking to the side of the store to check the alley again, but it was of course empty. A couple of larks fluttered out of a nearby tree, but there were no other birds in sight. The chicken was long gone.

Werner sighed, admitting defeat, and turned back just in time to see the woman perk up, tilting her head like she’d heard something.

“He’s here!” she squeaked, and rushed back through the workshop and into her store.

Werner grunted, gave the hill beyond the wall one last glance, then followed.


	4. Nearly Small Talk

“Let’s see… you got sweet peas last week, right?”

Doctor Werner picked his way through the back room, grumbling about lost chickens and wasted time, as the woman’s voice carried to him from somewhere in her flower shop. If whoever she was talking to responded, he couldn’t hear it.

“Then I might recommend… peonies?” she continued. “Or maybe gillyflowers! Roses are always an option, of course, but personally I think they’re a little overrated. You see them _everywhere_. Not that they’re not beautiful, but I like ranunculuses a lot more. Ranunculuses? Ranunculi? Well, you know, this one.” This was followed by a flutter of airy, nervous laughter and the continued absence of any notable response.

She continued to prattle on while Werner followed her voice, it being the only guide he had to make his way through the surprisingly confusing layout of the shop. She had led him to the back moments before, but left on his own he kept running into unfortunate walls of tulips, gardenias, irises, and more. He had to assume the place was constructed specifically to get on his nerves.

“I think you’re making the right choice. Ranunculuses symbolize charm, probably because of how puffy and cheery they look. They’re practically _made _to rest your head on. Like nature’s pillows. Though, I can’t say I condone sleeping on flowers – that’s a quick way to snap a stem and we in the flower business are not fans of stem-snapping unless it’s done with the proper tools.”

Werner rounded a corner.

Then tilted his head up.

It seemed that, against all odds, a giant had managed to squeeze himself into the botanical labyrinth. The man following the florist to the counter had to be well over six feet tall, with carefully brushed light brown hair up at the summit and a modest scruff of a beard. His starchy button-up could have fit two, maybe three Doctor Werners inside and it had a blue checkered pattern. He kept his hands folded in front of his chest like he was afraid to knock anything over.

Werner coughed, interrupting the florist’s steady flow of words.

“Madame,” he said, “your shop is a safety hazard.”

“Ah, Monsieur!” The woman turned, a small bouquet in her hands. The flowers were indeed rose-like, but with a heavier multitude of petals, and she’d gathered an assortment of reds, oranges, and yellows paired with a handful of dark purple blooms for contrast. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.”

She blinked, waiting for him to continue, but when it was clear he had no plan to elaborate she gave a small huff of laughter. “Well, I’m sorry about that,” she said. “It’s possible I talked your ear off a bit too much and gave it time to get away.”

“Not possibly, that is what happened,” Werner agreed. “Now, would you be so kind as to show me the exit? I’ve had quite enough for today.”

“Oh, ah, yes! Just give me a moment to ring this gentleman up and I’ll be right with you.”

The man gave Werner an uncomfortable smile that he did not return. After the florist rang him up, he thanked her quietly and slipped away, his departure marked by the chime of the door sensor.

The woman gave a heavy sigh and slumped against her counter. Werner noticed she seemed to have hurriedly scraped the dirt off, lines of it still lingering in hard-to-reach corners.

“God, I never stop _talking_,” she moaned. “I didn’t give him a chance to say _anything_. I just kept going and going and going – maybe he had stuff to say, huh, but did I think about that? No. I have no filter. I just say whatever comes to my mind and to hell with anyone who has anything actually _important _to say because no, _no_, _I _have things to say and I should say them right away over and over and over and never give anyone else a chance to voice their mind. Did he seem mad? He didn’t seem mad, did he? He comes in every week and I always do the exact same thing; he’s got to be sick of it by now.”

“Madame.”

She looked up wretchedly. “Yeah?”

“I don’t care.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. “And—why should you?” she managed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump all this on you. Ah… the exit is just through here.” She slid past the counter and led Werner to the front.

“I’ll most likely be back,” he found himself saying. “Are you open tomorrow?”

The woman nodded. “Every day except Sunday. Why? You think your thing will come back?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“What is it anyway?”

Werner didn’t answer. He stepped through the front entrance, the chime ringing above, and looked back through the open door. He could’ve thanked her for her help, limited though it may have been, but he wasn’t a particularly grateful person. Instead he gave her a quick once over.

“Your apron is inside-out,” he noted.

She started, looking down, and lifted up the front of her apron and to look inside. “_That’s _where it went!” she sighed. She quickly untied the apron and flipped it around, revealing her lost tag.

Her name was Gabrielle.

“He’s coming, Hugo!”

Madame Poulin hunched behind the store’s front window, watching the road beyond their small parking lot. She waved a hand to her husband, pointing across it as the old Monsieur Werner swung his leg over the fence. Monsieur Poulin approached from behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Already?” he asked.

“The fact that he was out at _all_ is nothing short of a miracle. Who cares how long he was gone?”

“But what did he leave for?”

“I told you, dear, he didn’t say. He just left. Oh, I don’t like him wandering out on the road like that. It’s always so busy, and he’s not exactly a young man.”

They both flinched as a car raced by, Monsieur Werner shaking a silent fist at it.

“Quick! Get the éclairs!” the madame ordered, rushing back to the counter. “But be subtle about it, he mustn’t know we made them for him or he’ll never take one!”

“On it,” her husband nodded, heading for the kitchen. By the time Werner creaked open the door, wiping his shoes on the mat, Monsieur Poulin had leaned up against the counter, nonchalantly nibbling on a chocolate éclair. He grinned widely.

“Ah! Monsieur Werner! How was your trip outside?”

“It’s Doctor.” He was already heading for the stairs.

“Ah, wait!” Madame Poulin called. “We made far too many éclairs, Mo—Docteur. We’ll never sell them all, you simply must have one! It would be a real help!”

The man sniffed, his mustache twitching. “You already put unsolicited chocolate in my grocery bag, Madame. I think that should suffice.”

“But this is _fresh_!” Monsieur Poulin contributed. “And if someone doesn’t eat them, they’ll just got to waste.”

He huffed and approached the counter, taking one of the pastries. “Awful business practice,” he noted, “giving things away for free.”

“Perhaps,” the madame agreed, “but we get by.”

“So, your walk was a good one, then?” Monsieur Poulin prompted. “Or was it _more_ than a walk?”

“There was walking involved. It was fine.”

“Any particular reason for the outing?” Madame Poulin added.

“Nothing that’s of your concern.”

The couple shared a glance.

“Well, the day is still young,” Madame Poulin said. “What do you plan to do with the rest of it?”

Werner finished his éclair and grabbed another, turning away. “I think I’ll do some reading,” he said, sounding as if he’d just made the decision. “Do tell your son I said as much, so that he might, by some miracle, refrain from churning out that wretched music.”

He ascended the stairs and the couple watched him go with thoughtful looks on their faces.

“At least he took the éclairs,” the monsieur noted.

“It could’ve gone worse,” the madame agreed. “That was very nearly small talk.”

Sometimes Alan Poulin took the long way home.

If you were going to be riding to and from the same place over and over again, it was nice to spice things up now and then. When he needed to, Alan could cut through the back alleys, through the greasier slums the rest of Paris liked to pretend didn’t exist, and be home in fifteen minutes, tops. But when he didn’t need to, there was a small road winding up a hill that made for a much nicer view. He dragged his motorcycle up there on clear nights, and got an eyeful of the Paris skyline.

Paris was, in his humble but absolutely correct opinion, overrated. It wasn’t as clean and beautiful as movies made it out to be, every other person smoked and clogged up the atmosphere, and traffic was a pain. But at night it really was something. In the fading glow of evening, with the scattering of miniscule lights flipping on around the city and the Eiffel Tower stabbing into the atmosphere, balancing the heavens on its tip, well… Alan didn’t mind the extra travel time. He parked to the side of the street, at the top of the hill, and idled for a moment, taking off his helmet to appreciate the view. His music from the build-in headphones leaked into the night.

In the far distance, the golden lights seemed to tremble, and he could almost believe it was waves catching in the moonlight, the ocean not quite ready to quiet down. Of course, that was just a trick, a mirage. It was impossible that Alan could be seeing the ocean.

The nearest beach was over two hours away.


	5. A Fascination with the Ocean

_I grew up with the ocean, but not with the fish. Not with the algae, or the seashells, or the stones on the beach. They were all there, of course, and I loved them right enough. Just as I loved the ice cream vendors and the funny tourists. Just as I loved the sailboats and the flashy swimsuits that seemed scandalous at the time and would be horridly modest now. Just as I loved the waves, and the salty air, and the sand between my toes. But I didn’t grow up with them the same way I grew up with the ocean itself. The same way I grew up with the seabirds._

_I am, as you might guess, something of a sucker for birds. And it all started in the coastal town of Le Conquet, with me taking bread to the beach as a child to experiment with the local aviary population. Which bird liked which bread? Did the horned grebe prefer pain de campagne or pain brié? Did cormorants like croissants? Was I willing to give up my favorite brioche to satisfy a wandering white crane? (The answer was always a self-sacrificing “yes.”) I took to the seabirds the same way they took to the water. And what I wanted more than anything was to understand them. I must have spent more than half of my childhood on the water, and it was still never enough. I itched to be near my ocean, and near my birds._

Werner wasn’t sure what possessed him to think Célia’s introductory chapter would be any more insightful than her chapter specifically dedicated to chickens, but after much consideration and a stern self-lecture on the fact that she had written the book to be _read _and it was ridiculous to think that doing so would in any way taint the words, he’d convinced himself to give it a shot. He’d read it in bed the night before and he’d read it again that morning with his eggs and buttered toast. It offered nothing. It taught him nothing. It was only an introduction. He read it a third time.

_Of course, now it has been proven that you really shouldn’t feed bread to birds, so it didn’t matter _what _my childhood research came up with. It was all for naught. Still, it’s an interesting paradox that churns deep in the pit of my stomach. The bread wasn’t good for the birds and I shouldn’t have fed it to them, but had I not been so fixated on the results of my experiments, would I have gone on to get a doctorate in ornithology? Would I have written the book that you now hold in your hands? _

_Failed experiments are not useless ones. No experiment is useless._

When it was time, he went after the chicken.

“You’re leaving _again_?”

Werner straightened his hat, not slowing as he approached the front door. “Do try to keep your jaw off the floor, Madame Poulin.”

“No, it’s just – it’s great! Would you like to take something to eat while you’re—”

“That is not necessary.”

The street was just as busy as it has been the day before, but if a damn _chicken _could cross it without difficulty every day Werner could certainly do the same. He glared at the oncoming traffic and shook his fist at any offending driver, crossed the fence when he got to it, and followed the chicken down the same route to the small shopping district. As before, the chicken went through a gap between the buildings and this time Werner didn’t hesitate. He strode into the florist’s shop and peered through the colorful blooms.

“Madame,” he called. “Take me to your back door.”

Gabrielle appeared a moment later. “Well, hey,” she said in greeting. “You really _did _come back. It’s here again?”

“And getting away,” he prompted.

“Right! Right! Through here.”

She led him the same way as the day before and followed as he approached the gate out of the garden. “Watch your step,” she said. “I just watered out here so everything’s a little squishy.”

Werner peered over the stone fence, eyes scanning for any sign of the chicken.

“Hey, I wanna apologize for yesterday,” Gabrielle said, still just behind him, peering over his shoulder at the green hill beyond. “I didn’t mean to unload on you. That was very inappropriate. My mom always told me not to bother the customers when _she _was running the store but if I don’t catch myself I’ll just go on and _on _and _on_—”

“Hmph,” Werner grunted, cutting her off as he spotted a flash of white feathers. He opened the gate and started trudging down the hill after it. Gabrielle, looking on, tilted her head.

“Is that… a chicken?” She chuckled lightly. “You’re following a chicken?”

Werner didn’t reply, eyes pinned to the bird. It was following the dirt road at the bottom and if he wanted to keep up with the pace it set, he didn’t have time for pleasantries. Not that he had time for pleasantries in the first place. Pleasantries, as a whole, were best left to people who actually cared about appearing, well, _pleasant_.

“I’ll leave the back door unlocked in case you come back this way!” she called. “Be careful! People can take the turns on that road pretty quickly!”

Werner grumbled to himself as he fell into step with the chicken, feet crunching on the grass at the side of the road. That last thing he needed was _another _young person trying to dote on him. He already had to deal with the Poulin couple on a daily basis.

_If you don’t want people to interact with you, just go back home, _a voice insisted._ What’s the point of this?_

He pushed the thought aside. He _would _go home – as soon as he figured out where the chicken was going. Célia had said it herself, no experiment was useless.

Not that this was an experiment.

He and the chicken walked the same path for a good fifteen minutes. It bobbed and twitched with each small strut, head constantly on a swivel, and barely flinched at the occasional cars that motored past, ruffling its feathers. Nothing seemed to bother the bird. It had to be aware of Werner’s presence, but it didn’t acknowledge him. It moved forward at a steady pace, not stopping to peck at the ground or scratch at the dirt. The more time he spent watching it, but more convinced he was that he was right to follow. There was something vaguely unnatural about the determination in its step and it seemed, to him, that its eyes were not as empty as a chicken’s ought to be. The thought was almost certainly a logical fallacy – a trick of the mind. Him anthropomorphizing the animal to justify his own strange obsession with it.

Werner shook the jumbled thoughts out of his head and took in his surroundings. It was warm, but not hot, and the breeze that chased at his heels could almost be described as soothing. There was birdsong, rustling grass, and small, unoffending clouds pedaling through the sun-soaked sky. He admitted to himself that it might turn into a not-entirely-terrible day and sighed in something akin to contentment.

This was his mistake. After all his years spent trudging through existence, he ought to have known better than to voice any feelings bordering on satisfaction. To voice something was to dare the universe to prove it wrong.

“LOOK OUT!!!”

Werner had enough time to whip his head towards the sound of the voice before something hard and plastic smacked the top of his head, knocking his flat cap off and throwing his wispy gray hairs to the mercy of the wind. He clutched at his head, catching sight of a model airplane as it crunched into the grass a few feet away.

“What the _devil_?”

“Oh crap, crap, crap!”

Werner turned towards the sound of stomping of feet as he massaged the growing bump on his scalp, his eyebrows locking together over squinted, righteous eyes in an automatic but nonetheless impressive glower.

A young boy, maybe nine or so, sprinted down the hill to him, holding a two-handed remote control. He had walnut-brown skin, his curly black hair shaved close to the scalp, and giant, dark eyes that were made all the bigger by his panicked expression.

“Are you okay?!”

Werner readjusted his glasses with a huff and picked up his hat. “Hardly,” he grunted. “Just what _exactly_ do you think you’re doing?”

The boy tilted his head at that, like it should be obvious. “Flying a plane?”

Werner’s glare deepened as he brushed dirt of his hat and slipped it back on his head. “Perhaps I should be more specific. _Why _are you flying a plane you clearly have no control over, on a hill next to a road brimming with reckless, idiotic drivers, at an hour when kids your age are _supposed _to be refusing to get out of bed so that the rest of us can enjoy some well-earned peace and _quiet_?”

The boy scratched the side of his nose, eyebrows raised. Now that he’d determined that Dr. Werner wasn’t particularly hurt, he seemed rather unbothered by the whole affair. How annoying. The doctor didn’t consider himself to be a necessarily intimidating man, but would it kill people to respond to his irritation in kind? Why did everyone have to be so blasted _friendly _all the time? Surely it was exhausting.

“Well, I have to fly it sometime,” he said, walking over to pick up the fallen plane. It was half the size he was. “And people aren’t usually out here this early.”

Werner huffed. “‘_Have _to’ seems like an exaggeration. You could have killed me!”

He didn’t mention that just a couple days ago getting killed wouldn’t have been something he cared to worry about. He still wasn’t worried about it. It was his time – but it would still be his time _after _he found out where the chicken was going.

Speaking of which…

Werner swore, scanning the horizon. The chicken was, of course, gone. Was this going to be a regular thing? People distracting him from doing the _one _thing he’d really wanted to do in over a decade by roping him into frivolous conversations? This was why he stayed in his apartment.

“What’s wrong?” the boy asked. Werner frowned at him.

“Thanks to a certain reckless _child_, I lost track of what I was following.”

“You mean Alice?”

Werner paused. “What?”

“Alice.” The kid hooked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing down the road. “The chicken. She walks by here all the time.”

“Its name is _Alice_?”

“Well, that’s what I call her. She’s been coming for a while now. Almost hit her with the plane once and she didn’t even flinch.” The boy grinned – he had a large gap between his front teeth. “She’s _fearless_.”

“And you…” Werner pressed his lips together. “You wouldn’t happen to know where it’s heading?”

“Sure! She always crosses the bridge into town. Want me to show you?”

“…”

Which is how Dr. Werner ended up, inexplicably, with a child escorting him into Paris proper. A child whose name, he learned, was Didier, and who had been learning to fly his monstrosity of a plane – a gift from his older brother, Louis – for the last couple months without any real improvement.

“But I wanna be good at it by the time Louis gets back,” he said, brow set in a determined line. “That way we can fly planes _together_.”

Didier didn’t say where Louis was and Werner didn’t care to ask. They were walking at a much faster pace in order to catch up with the chicken, and if he was impersonable when he _wasn’t _out of breath, he certainly wasn’t chatty when breathless. Didier seemed content to steer the conversation, just like all the other blabbermouths that liked to elbow their way into his life, and Werner did his best to only half-listen. Still, he couldn’t help learning about Didier’s love of comic books, onion soup, and Legos – and couldn’t help objecting wholeheartedly to his hatred of anything even remotely resembling chocolate. _Honestly. _What kind of child disliked chocolate?

“There she is!” Didier finally announced, hugging the massive toy plane to his puffed-out chest with one arm and pointing with the other. Sure enough, as he crested the hill after him Werner spotted the chicken crossing the stone bridge into town.

“If you hurry you can catch her,” the boy prompted. “I’m gonna stay out here to fly my plane some more.”

Werner just nodded, too winded to say anything.

“What do you want the chicken for anyway, Monsieur?”

Maybe not _too _winded. “It’s _Doctor_.”

Didier’s eyes grew wide. “Are you like a chicken doctor?”

“No.”

“Then what kind of doctor?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“…Oh.”

Werner glanced down at the boy, who looked properly chagrined for the first time, and felt an annoying tinge of regret. _This boy talked to me nonstop for a good ten minutes_, he thought. He got the feeling that maybe the reason he’d learned so much about him in such a short time was less about Didier being a chatterbox and more about him not having anyone else to talk _to_. Perhaps he missed his brother more than he was letting on. Werner cleared his throat and looked towards the bridge, where the chicken was almost across. What was the harm, really, in just telling the kid his field of study? It wasn’t as if admitting to it would send lightning crackling across the sky. It was a job title, not a death sentence. For the most part, anyway.

“I used to be an ichthyologist,” he muttered, then started down the hill.

“Ick-the-what? Monsieur?”

Werner walked faster. He still had some catching up to do.


	6. Coffee Storm

Being the son of a baker would have been great if not for the fact that it was terrible.

There were advantages, of course. Alan Poulin got free croissants in the morning despite his father’s lighthearted jabs at him for mooching, he had nearly-unlimited access to whatever dessert he wanted for his birthday, and he’d accumulated an unprecedented knowledge of all things baking over the many years stuck in the kitchen with his old man. The last one, however, was the problem. Alan could bake. Not as well as his father, perhaps, but well enough to get called in to work early at the Tempête de Café whenever their official baker couldn’t make it.

He’d arrived at 5:00 a.m. that morning, his slight eyeliner backlit by the bags under his eyes, and preceded to operate dangerous cooking equipment in a half-dead state, his learned behaviors from a childhood in the kitchen the only thing that kept him from reducing the building to a pile of smoldering rubble. He’d filled the display case with éclairs, custard tarts, profiteroles, opera cakes, pralines, and a dozen other desserts. If the hungry masses wanted savory, they could go to another café – the only thing Alan could make without sugar in it was coffee.

By the time the café opened at 7:00, Alan was already set to call it a day. Unfortunately, his lunch break wasn’t until eleven. That meant six hours – _six hours _– of uninterrupted work until he could breathe air not steeped in caffeine. When the time came, he did not say goodbye to the coworkers behind the counter pouring overpriced lattes. He did not untie his apron nor his hair, held in a tuft at the back of his neck. He did not acknowledge much of anything as he stumbled out of the café’s back door and leaned against the cool metal when he’d closed it behind him. Had he been a smoker, this was the moment he would have lit a cigarette. Instead he put on his headphones and pulled up his hood, pinching the bridge of his nose. _I need the money_, he thought. _Overtime is good – overtime is extra pay. I need the money. _Power chords blared, dissolving his eardrums and letting himself live, briefly, in a world where no one else existed.

He would have missed the chicken completely, as he had every other day, if not for the colorful curse that pierced through his music and cracked open his eyes.

Monsieur Werner’s pantleg was caught on the top of the fence.

It wasn’t a particularly tall fence, but it was, by Alan’s approximation, just low enough to convince a determined person that it was scalable, and just high enough to disprove that theory for anyone with, say, the knees of a 70-year-old man.

Alan watched the struggle for a moment, trying to process the fact that Monsieur Werner was _out of the apartment_. He was both out of the apartment and a handful of kilometers _away _from it – where had he gotten a car? Had one of Alan’s parents driven him? Where were _they_? The old man made no progress on his pantleg and Alan finally pulled his headphones down, the music thrumming against his neck.

“You’re full of surprises this week, aren’t you, Gramps?”

The man jerked his head up, his hat going slightly askew, and gaped at Alan. He had one leg planted on the ground on Alan’s side of the fence and the other awkwardly raised at the point where it was caught. His arms were stretched out, doing their best to keep his balance. Alan could see the moment he fully registered who had spoken in the weight of the man’s eyebrows. They crashed down like two slabs of concrete as he met Alan’s stare.

“_Poulin_. What are _you_ doing here?”

“Lurking in an alley? Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect me to be doing?” Alan pushed off of the wall and walked to Werner’s side, draping an arm easily over the top of the fence “More importantly, why are _you_ here?”

Monsieur Werner jerked his leg, sending loud, metallic rattles down the length of the fence. It did nothing to help his situation. “That,” he said through tight lips, “is not your concern.”

“No?”

“No.”

But then Werner couldn’t help but shoot a fleeting glance down the alleyway, and Alan followed the look. He caught sight of the plump, white chicken just in time for it to turn a corner and disappear.

“No freaking way,” Alan said.

Monsieur Werner’s attempts to disentangle himself redoubled. “It’s _getting away_!”

“Is that the _same _chicken? The one from a couple days ago?” It must have gotten into the alley through the gap in the corner of the fence. The one decidedly not Monsieur-Werner-sized.

“Would you stop gaping and _help_ me?” the man snapped. “Or has that drivel you listen to corroded your last measure of decency?”

“Jeez, Gramps, chill.”

“I am _not _your ‘gramps!’”

Alan sighed, assessing the damage. Monsieur Werner’s pantleg was torn at the hem, twisted into a knot around a jutting barb of metal wiring. He could’ve probably figured out a way to untangle it, but if there was one thing he and the old man shared at that moment, it was a lack of patience. Alan opened his pocketknife.

“Why do you have _that_?” Monsieur Werner frowned.

“It’s for all the street fights I get into,” Alan said, monotone, as he began cutting through the fabric.

“You can get fined for carrying a bladed weapon.”

Alan rolled his eyes. “It’s tiny and useful, no one _cares_.” He jerked the blade up and the remaining strands snapped free. Werner stumbled forward with a crooked sort of dignity, straightening the collar of his too-big suit jacket. Alan didn’t expect to be thanked, and he wasn’t.

“It went left,” Werner said instead, mostly to himself, and shuffled down the alley. His breath came out in labored huffs, like his lungs were too small to handle all the air he was trying to take in. Alan put away his pocketknife and frowned.

“Hey… did you _walk _here?”

He did not get an answer.

“You _did_!” Alan started to follow, keeping a fair amount of distance between them. “Twenty years in the same apartment and now you’ve walked all the way into the heart of Paris. What do you have against that chicken?”

The old man made an irritated sound in the back of his throat as he peered around the wall, squinted eyes searching. “I have nothing _against _it,” he muttered. “I just want to know where it’s going.”

“Why?”

He huffed. “I wouldn’t expect _you _to understand.”

Alan finally paused his music, giving his full attention to peering over Werner’s shoulder. “No luck?” he asked.

Monsieur Werner smacked the wall he was leaning on, then stared at his hand like the crisscrossed veins running through it were a roadmap he’d yet to figure out how to navigate. “I keep losing it,” he complained. “Things keep getting in the way.”

Alan nodded sagely. “Like fences.”

“Like _people_!”

Alan crossed his arms. “I _helped _you, old man.”

“Yes, well, you’ve helped enough. Go back to your ‘lurking.’”

Alan narrowed his eyes, studying Monsieur Werner. He didn’t look great. He was old, of course, so there was that, but he was also quite obviously _drained_. His wrinkles looked less like the effects of age and more like he’d been wrung out like a wet towel. He was flushed from exertion, the hair that peaked out from his cap was in disarray, and the hand not against the wall was trembling slightly.

Alan’s next sigh was a deep one.

“I’m actually on break right now,” he said. “Don’t need to lurk for another couple hours. So…”

It pained him. It really did. The old man was the least pleasant person Alan had ever had the misfortune to talk with. He was the very embodiment of “crotchety.” He hated on Alan’s music, he disrespected Alan’s far-too-caring parents, and despite what he said to the contrary he had _yet _to die and leave Alan his apartment. Monsieur Werner was a nuisance. But he was a nuisance standing alone, breathless and trembling in an alleyway. And maybe, as much as Alan disliked the idea, being raised by the two most selfless people in Paris had had some residual effects. Alan’s mother and father had raised him to be a baker _and _a chump.

Monsieur Werner frowned at him, waiting, and Alan finally gave in.

“…You hungry?”

Werner didn’t know what possessed him to say yes.

Well, he _did_ – it was his traitorously empty stomach, his traitorously shaky knees, and his traitorously _absent _chicken – not that the chicken was his. He would be surprised if that “Alice” belong to _anyone_. Free range was one thing, globetrotting was another.

The _point _was, Werner should have turned the Poulin boy down, but he didn’t, and was therefore rather irked with himself. It was a small consolation that the boy didn’t seem too happy with the arrangement either. He slunk into the bistro like a stray cat and sat with hunched shoulders in the booth, gray eyes just managing to peer at the menu over his dark bags. Werner wondered why the _boy _could possibly be tired. _He_ hadn’t walked several kilometers over the last few hours, being bombarded with cheery florists and talkative children, navigating the ever-bustling and nearly unrecognizable streets of Paris, chasing after an irritatingly elusive chicken down several alleys and through a variety of other storefronts until finally losing it at the cost of the pantleg of one of his best suits. Werner was _rightfully_ tired. These were activities for someone much younger than himself. Someone with a spring in their step high enough to leap over a chain link fence.

They ordered their food and sat in silence, Werner pointedly not beginning a conversation. He gave the bistro a onceover instead; the Poulin boy had picked a surprisingly cheery place. It was on a bright street corner, with large windows overlooking the busy Paris streets and an interior adorned in faded white wood trimmings and flowerpots hanging from the ceiling over every other table. The pot above the two of them held lemon-scented geraniums, light purple and delicate.

Alan unfolded his cloth napkin. “So,” he said. “You never answered my question. About why you’re following the chicken.”

Werner grunted and looked away. “I agreed to lunch, not an interrogation.”

“Oh, come on. I’m buying – least you can do is humor me.”

“You are _not _buying. The last thing I need today is another unsolicited favor. I let you pick the venue because I’m no longer familiar with the local cuisine. Beyond that, our arrangement is over.”

“Our… ‘_arrangement_?’” Alan really did look tired. When he sighed, he seemed to fold into himself like an old, tattered rug. “Gramps, we’re eating _lunch_, it’s not a… I don’t know. A _meeting._ A _conference_. It’s two hungry people putting food in their bodies in order to not be hungry anymore.”

“And it’s already more time than I’m particularly comfortable spending with a disrespectful hooligan like yourself.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “You know what? Maybe I _don’t _care about your chicken. Maybe I don’t care about _you, _since you’re just a grumpy, ungrateful old man. Let’s just eat our respective lunches in silence and go our separate ways.”

“I see we’re finally in agreement.”

The rest of their wait time was devoid of chatter until a different waiter than the one who took their order came up with their food. A majority of his fair hair was dyed green and a ladder of rings ran along the length of one ear. Werner was utterly unsurprised when the young man recognized his circumstantial companion.

“Hey, Alan! Thought that was you.” He set a mixed salad in front of Alan and an onion soup in front of Werner. “You get called in early again?”

“Like father like son,” Alan said without enthusiasm. He picked up his fork and used it to gesture wearily between Werner and the waiter.

“Gramps, meet Lyle. Lyle, Gramps.”

Lyle’s thin eyebrows crunched together. “Wait, isn’t your grandpa dead? No offense.”

“I am _not _his grandfather,” Werner snapped. “My name is Doctor Werner and you will address me as such. Not that I anticipate associating with either of you much further after today.” He unfurled his napkin with a snap and draped it over his lap, starting in on his soup.

Lyle laughed like he was trying to dislodge something from his throat. “_This _is that Werner guy? Thought you said he never went outside?”

“He doesn’t,” Alan agreed. He narrowed his eyes at the doctor. “Normally.”

“Well, hey, first time for everything.” Lyle grinned, leaning against the booth in what Werner considered to be a most unprofessional manner. “We’re waiting on your apartment, you know.”

“‘We?’” Werner couldn’t help himself.

Alan pulled a face. “Dude, have some tact. He’s not dead yet.”

“Yeah, but he’s working on it!” Lyle took a couple pens from his apron pocket and drummed out a small beat along the table. “I’m the drummer,” he explained with a satisfied grin, teeth too bright in the approaching noon.

Werner’s frown was made of granite. “I beg your pardon?”

“You haven’t told him?”

Alan shrugged, taking a bite of salad. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It so _does_!” Lyle shifted his lean so he was facing Werner. “We’re gonna use your place for band practice!”

Werner’s soup turned sour in his mouth. He glared at Poulin. “You actually _play _that dreadful music?”

“I agreed to lunch,” Alan echoed. “Not an interrogation.”

But Lyle was only too happy to answer for him. “He’s a _mean _guitarist. You should hear the guy. And once we finally have a place to practice, we’re gonna take the world by storm.” He gave Werner’s shoulder a pat and the old man’s glared deepened. “So no pressure, but until that place is vacated our dreams sit still and sad in an old, dusty corner.”

“I’ve never looked forward to death less,” Werner said. Lyle just laughed that rough, choking laugh again and finally left them in peace. He came back later with their main course and to refill their drinks, but by then the bistro had filled up and he didn’t have time to chat. As they ate, Werner studied Poulin when he thought he could get away with it. It wasn’t until their meal was done that he finally spoke.

“You really _do _have a job, don’t you?”

Alan set down the glass he’d been drinking. “What gave it away, Gramps? The apron? The dead eyes?”

“That young man said you were called in early.”

“Yeah, well, story of my life. Hours of work, zero appreciation, and hair that always smells like old coffee.”

“It probably wouldn’t if you’d cut it.”

Alan didn’t reply, just leaned back against his side of the booth and pulled out his wallet.

Werner fished inside his jacket for his own. Reflex brought his hand to the main pocket, and he’d pulled out Célia’s book before he had time to realize what it was. Alan raised a curious eyebrow and Werner fought to keep his face impassive.

“Odd place to keep your money,” Alan said.

“It appears I forgot my wallet,” Werner replied.

“So you’re paying with a _book_?”

“It _appears_,” Werner repeated, gingerly tucking the book back into his pocket, “that you will be paying for me, after all.”

But Alan’s smile was the dark, biting one so unlike that of his parents. It grew on his face, fierce and taunting, and with it came an ultimatum.

“Only,” he said, “if you tell me about the chicken.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemon-scented geraniums, like the ones above their table, symbolize an unexpected meeting, at least according to the internet. I thought that was pretty appropriate.  
Also, I looked it up – people in France just like… get ridiculously long lunch breaks? How is THAT fair? And you’re not allowed to carry a pocketknife? I’m learning so much!


	7. A Chicken by any Other Name

For someone as conventionally stubby as Madame Poulin, she sure could pounce with the agility of a half-starved wildcat set loose in a sausage factory. Alan didn’t stand a chance.

“What happened?!” she demanded. Alan’s father leaned against the frame of the kitchen doorway, looking bemused but no less curious. He nodded at his son as Alan stepped further into the store. Alan took a swig of the complementary coffee he’d swiped before he left work. It was only four, but Alan was ready to turn in for the night – understandable, he figured, considering he’d worked a total of ten hours that day. Not including his lunch, which had been exhausting for less conventional reasons.

“What happened with what?” Alan asked.

His mother made an impatient flapping gesture with her hands. “With Monsieur Werner!”

“I dunno.” Alan took another sip. “_What _happened?”

“_Oh_.” She came up and smacked him lightly on the arm. “Stop being coy! When Monsieur Werner came back, he was very grumpy, even by _his_ standards, and so I asked him how his day was and do you know what he said? He said to ask _you_.” She crossed her freckled arms and gave Alan her best squint. “So, I’m asking you. What. Happened?”

Alan shrugged. “He visited me at work.”

Madame Poulin blinked. Monsieur Poulin leaned forward.

“He walked all the way to the café?” he asked.

“Seems that way.”

“To see you?”

Alan’s grimace masqueraded as a smile. “I was more like collateral damage.”

“All _right_.” Madame Poulin swiped the coffee from Alan’s hand, steered him to the chair behind the counter, and plonked him down. She raised the paper cup above her head. “One more cryptic one-liner and I dump this coffee down the drain, young man. What is this all about?”

“Well, that one’s easy,” Alan said. “It’s about Alice.”

Alan had snorted, and Monsieur Werner had looked at him like he wouldn’t be opposed to setting his hair on fire.

“You _named _it?” Alan asked.

“I most certainly did _not_,” Werner huffed. “The boy did. The one with the plane.”

On their way back to the Tempête de Café, Alan and Werner walked beneath cheery brick buildings warmed by the yellow strips of light that fell into the street. Despite Alan’s altruistic payment of the lunch bill, the old man had been tight-lipped with his story and it had taken Alan’s constant prompting to get him through the whole thing. He hadn’t given specific details on where he’d walked, who he’d talked with, or even a single name – until this slip up. And Alan planned to cash in on it.

“Huh.” He pointed a finger at the old man. “So, the chicken has a name, but not the kid?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Werner rolled his eyes. “His name was _Didier_ – but it doesn’t matter! I’ve explained my situation. My end of the bargain has been held up.”

“What I still don’t get,” Alan continued, “is why you’re following Alice in the first place.”

“Don’t call it that,” the man snapped.

“_You _called it that.”

“Accidently. It’s just a chicken.”

“So, why are you following her?”

“It’s none of your business!”

“Well, is it any of yours? She’s not _your _chicken.”

“She’s – it’s – _no one’s _chicken!”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know that. I assume that.”

“Then what _do _you know?”

“That it’s going somewhere!”

Maybe he was just tired, but Alan very nearly snorted again. He couldn’t think of another conversation he’d had that was as ridiculous as this one – and he was having this conversation with _Monsieur Werner_, a man he barely knew despite the fact that he’d been living in the same building as him for the past ten years. Life really did throw you for a loop sometimes.

“The chicken’s not _going _anywhere, Gramps. It’s a chicken.”

Werner harrumphed. “It’s obviously going _somewhere_. It follows the same path every day, not even stopping to eat.”

“Then maybe it’s going somewhere to eat.”

“Why walk so far for _food_?” Monsieur Werner hunched his shoulders, leaning in slightly. Maybe it was Alan’s imagination, but it seemed like the man had a glint in his eye. “We passed plenty of flora that would suffice for a chicken’s meal if that was the case. _Think, _Poulin! Something else is going on.”

Alan regarded him, stone-faced. “Like what?”

Werner gave a soft sigh, pursing his lips. “I don’t know. That’s what I plan to find out.”

“Maybe the chicken’s the ghost of an old meal that’s come back to haunt you.”

Werner balked at him, like he wasn’t certain he’d heard him right, and then leaned back. He shoulders stiffened again. The glint in his eye vanished, assuming it had really been there at all. With a disdainful shake of his head, he said, “You young people can’t take anything _seriously_,” and they continued on.

When they reached the alley where Alan had cut Werner free of the fence, and moved passed it, Alan spoke up again.

“Well, more power to you, Gramps. Chase all the chickens you want. Just go _around _the fence from now on. I might not be there to save you next time.”

“You did not _save_ me.”

“I dunno. I felt pretty heroic.”

“I was not in danger.”

“Yeah, you were—you’re old. Everything you do is dangerous.”

Werner didn’t respond to that. Didn’t so much as scoff.

They rounded the corner and stopped at the door to the café, where Alan pulled out his phone.

“Alright, I’m guessing you’ve got no plan on how to get back, so I’m gonna call you a car.”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“Little late for that. Unless you’re planning to walk back?”

“I walked _here_, didn’t I?”

Alan grunted, leaning against the front window of the café. Monsieur Werner had on his typical scowl, arms crossed protectively over his concave chest. He reminded Alan of a piece of origami, with all his wrinkles and folds. All his sharp edges. Origami was not known for being particularly sturdy.

“You’re probably tired,” he answered him, and started punching in the number for a cab.

“I have no intention of owing you anything,” Werner said. “And I’ve nothing else to tell you.” His watch beeped and he shut it off with an impatient growl.

“I don’t know about that,” Alan said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve got one more question.”

Alan held his thumb over the call button and met Werner’s raised eyebrow with one of his own. In a calm, clear voice, he asked the question he’d been dying to ask ever since their lunch at the café.

He opened his mouth and said it, quick and casual, like it was nothing.

He said, “Who’s Célia?”

And any friendliness, any begrudging camaraderie, vanished in the plow of Werner’s eyebrows down his weathered forehead. In the pull of his twisted expression, briefly that of shock, followed immediately by outrage. Alan Poulin thought he had seen the old Monsieur Werner angry before, but he realized now he’d been mistaken. Werner didn’t say anything. Didn’t bluster. Didn’t snap.

He did, however, walk all the way home.

“I can’t believe this.” Madame Poulin was beside herself, coming out from behind the counter so she had room to pace, Alan’s coffee still held hostage in her hand. “You got him to talk! You! This is amazing! He _never _talks to us!”

“Even when we bribe him.” Monsieur Poulin agreed.

“And he not only talked with you, he had _lunch _with you! This – this is big!”

“But I don’t understand,” Monsieur Poulin added, head resting on the frame of the kitchen doorway. “Who _is _Célia?”

Alan shrugged. “I don’t know. But he was carrying her book around, and she had the same last name as him.”

“That could’ve been a coincidence,” his father pointed out. “How’d you know she was someone he knew?”

“I didn’t.” Alan stretched, felt a million bones settle reluctantly into place. “Until I saw his reaction.”

“His sister?” Madame Poulin suggested. “His wife?”

“His daughter?” Monsieur Poulin supplied, baffling both mother and son alike.

“It’s hard to picture him as a father,” the woman admitted.

“It’s hard to picture him as a _husband_,” Alan added. “He’s not exactly a charmer.”

“_Alan_,” both parents scolded at the same time, their tone scarily similar. He raised his hands in surrender.

“Whoever she is,” he said, “the old man isn’t exactly itching to talk about her. I thought he was gonna push me into traffic.”

Madame Poulin shook her head and took hold of the conversation, steering it back into the lane she wanted. “You still got him to _talk_, Alan. We know where he’s going now – what he’s doing. From the sound of it, he’s found himself some purpose.”

“Purpose in a wild goose chase?” Alan asked.

“Wild _chicken _chase,” his dad corrected, looking pleased with himself.

“It doesn’t matter _what _it is,” Madame Poulin insisted. She moved up and down one of the aisles with a fervor, waving Alan’s poor coffee about like it was a flaming torch. “It’s getting him out of the apartment. That makes it worth encouraging. Alan, you’ve got to help him!”

She turned to him, grinning, her blond curls bobbing with purpose.

“Uh, beg your pardon?”

“A few days ago, he was ready to _die_! Now he’s out there living. Walking. Talking! Yes, the reason’s an unconventional one, but any reason to enjoy life is a good reason. So, _you’re _going to make sure he keeps going.”

“How?” he asked, baffled. “It’s not like he _likes _me, Mom, the lunch thing was just a weird coincidence.”

“Then make some more coincidences. You’re a smart boy, you’ll come up with something.”

“Let me get this straight,” Alan said, leaning forward, pressing his hands flat together like he was praying. “You want me to pep Monsieur Werner up so that he doesn’t remember that he wants to die?”

Madame Poulin rolled her eyes, shrugging. “That’s a simple way of putting it, yes.”

“Okay, but…I still kind of, like, _want _the apartment.”

“_Alan_,” his parents both warned. The identical intonation really was uncanny. Alan sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” he said. “Fine. I’ll do what I can, but if he didn’t like me before, he full-on _hates _me now.”

“He doesn’t have to like you.” Madame Poulin finally placed the coffee on the counter, her energy settling at Alan’s agreement. “Just be on his side. Look out for him.”

Alan stood, grabbed the coffee, and took a drink. It was cold. He finished it off anyway and tossed the empty cup in the bin. His parents both looked satisfied, like they had the whole situation under control now, even though Alan still wasn’t sure he understood the _whole _situation. His mom and dad had brushed off all the questions still squirming at the back of his mind and, well… He couldn’t help it. After talking with the old man, even _he _was a little curious as to where the chicken was going. Why it was ducking under fences, slipping through alleys, and crossing roads. He’d made light of it before but… it _was _a little odd.

And there was something else. The name. Alice.

He didn’t know why, but something about it felt strange.

“Do we know anyone named Alice?” he asked.

His father’s eyebrows shot up. “No?” he said. “Why would we? You said it was the boy who came up with the name, not Monsieur Werner.”

“Yeah, it was, it’s just…” he trailed off. He didn’t have a “just.” It was _just _a name. Like the chicken was _just _a chicken. He was tired. He wasn’t thinking straight.

“Nevermind,” he said. “I’m going to bed.”

The duet of “good nights,” followed him as he slipped into the kitchen and past it, heading for his bedroom. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, not with the caffeine vibrating like a stuck buzzer through his system, but at least he could close his eyes and listen to his music. Let his brain shut off.

Except his brain didn’t shut off.

Even as he sprawled out on his bed, head firmly between a set of headphones, music loud enough to do permanent damage, he was thinking about the stupid chicken. About the annoying old man. About the woman named Célia.

Eventually he gave up and pulled out his phone. He typed her name into the search bar, along with the title of the book he’d seen a few hours ago. Its picture popped up without much digging. Bright blue binding, black cover, bold silver letters, silhouettes of birds peppering the front.

There were many libraries in Paris. Almost all of them had a copy.


	8. Docteur Poisson

_The plump, tottering form of the average chicken is not to be underestimated. They look harmless and, yes, as a whole, are not much of a threat to the human race, but we should not forget for a moment that they are the closest thing our age has to the dinosaur. Their claws are sharp and will tear. Their beaks are pointed and will peck. They fear very little, despite the word “chicken” being synonymous with “coward,” and have no qualms with shedding another’s blood. _

_All this leads into my next point in defense of the humble chicken’s intelligence: the pecking order. Like many animals, like humans, chickens have a social hierarchy. Early on in a flock, vicious fights will break out, with the strongest chicken climbing to the top and claiming the most comfortable nest, best roosting spot, and the rights to eat first. If this sounds barbaric, it’s because it is. Some chickens may not even survive the process. What is interesting, however, is that once the order is settled, peace comes quietly and naturally to the flock. Very few fights break out. Every bird knows their place and settles into it. Maybe having the biggest, meanest bird at the top feels a bit authoritarian, but I think there’s something comforting about knowing where you stand. And, unlike many cases with humans, the leader of the chickens will oftentimes let the subordinates eat first while they watch out for predators, secure in the knowledge that there will be food left over. This is because chickens understand what humans sometimes cannot – that they need each other. And that if they want to survive, it is not a matter of who eats first, but that everyone is around _to _eat. _

Madame Poulin was blocking the front door. Her arms were crossed, her legs planted firmly underneath her in an upside-down V, and from one hand hung a full tote bag. She did not smile as Doctor Werner stepped off the staircase, and the distance between the two of them yawned like an American Western shoot-out. Werner’s plan to slip out of the store while avoiding interaction became exponentially unlikely.

“Good morning, Monsieur,” the woman said.

“Doctor,” the doctor replied.

They stared each other down. Had this _been _an American Western, a tumbleweed would have blown across their path as a whistle curled in the air like a lonely wind.

“You’re going out again,” she said. It was an accusation more than a question.

“That had been my intention, Madame. Although it does not seem to be yours.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of keeping you here. I think it’s wonderful that you’re finally out and about. However, you will not be leaving the store today without _this_.”

She uncrossed her arms and held the tote bag out. Through the glass door behind her, Werner could make out the small white form of Alice – of _the chicken_ – as it waited to cross the road. He frowned impatiently.

“What is it?”

“Lunch.”

Werner was baffled. “You… packed me a lunch.”

“I did.”

“Exactly how old do you think I am, Madame?”

A grin finally broke free on her face, displacing her constellation of freckles in a wash of sunlight. “You could argue with me, but…” She tossed her head behind her. “You’ve got a chicken to catch.”

The youngest Poulin had shared the reason for his outings, then. _Very well_, Werner thought. It wasn’t as if it had been a secret. If they thought him a loon for following a chicken around Paris, that was their right. He had more important things to worry about – such as getting out the door. Werner shook his head and started forward, intent on getting around the woman. “I do not need your charity, Madame Poulin,” he said.

Madame Poulin side-stepped to block him as he came up to meet her. “It’s not charity,” she replied smugly, holding out the bag. “I fully expect to be reimbursed, and if you don’t like that then next time you can pack your own lunch.” She squinted at him. “_Docteur _Werner.”

Though the glass, the old man watched the chicken sprint across the road and under the fence, disappearing into the undergrowth.

Werner was an intelligent man. He knew when he’d been beaten.

“Ah, the chicken man returns!” Gabrielle greeted.

“I am not here for idle chatter,” Werner said. “And I have a name.”

“What are you following a chicken around for, anyway?” she asked, already stepping away from the counter to lead him to the back of the store. “If you’re hungry, there’s plenty of great restaurants around here.”

Werner looked at her like she’d just coughed up a thousand bees, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, then complained about the aftertaste. “I don’t want to _eat _it!” he snapped.

She snorted. “I was _kidding_, Monsieur! I can see you’ve got a lunch already. Not to be nosy, but are those eclairs?”

The doctor grunted and switched the tote bag to his other hand. Gabrielle, as seemed to be her talent, continued her endless stream of words as if he wanted to hear any of them.

“I’ve got no room to talk about this bird business, anyway. I’m no better. Once I was convinced that this pigeon was following me around Paris. Granted, I was eleven, but still. I’d see it everywhere I went: at the playground at school, in the backyard at home, and all over the shopping districts. No one believed me. They said there were pigeons everywhere and it couldn’t possibly be the same one.”

“Of course it wasn’t the same one,” Werner said distastefully. Gabrielle laughed.

“Oh, but I was _so sure_! Every morning I’d make eye contact with it through my window and it was like it _knew _me.”

They’d reached the back of the store, stepping down into the workshop. Werner picked up his pace, but the woman just followed suit.

“I called it my guardian bird,” she mused, opening the back door for him then leaning against the doorframe when he’d passed. “I thought it scared away evil. Looked out for me, that kind of thing. Mom told me I was just projecting.”

She paused and Werner turned around, slightly surprised. Was she… finished? Actually _finished_? It seemed too good to be true.

She was fiddling with the tie on her apron, a slightly melancholic smile nudging her cheeks.

Werner’s mouth opened without his consent. “Projecting?” he asked.

“Oh, I thought it was my dad,” she said lightly, not quite meeting his eyes. “He’d died the year before.”

“Ah.” Werner patted his pockets, then wasn’t sure why he’d patted his pockets. He put his hands behind his back. He coughed. “That’s preposterous,” he finally said.

Gabrielle’s laugh was a little too loud, but not disingenuous. “It’s _is_,” she said. “I just missed him. Grief does things to you. Everything feels like a sign. Nothing’s unimportant – otherwise _everything _is. You know?”

And strangely enough, Doctor Werner did know. Strangely enough, Gabrielle had stumbled into making some semblance of sense.

This time, the doctor ducked. The plane sailed a few inches over him, and his hat stayed securely on his head. The toy crunched unceremoniously into the grass a bit further down the road.

“Hey!” a familiar voice called. Werner turned to see the boy Didier sprinting down the same hill as yesterday, wearing a grin of greeting in perfect opposition to Werner’s frown.

“I hope for your sake that was another accident,” Werner bristled. “Because this is starting to feel targeted.”

When Didier reached the end of the hill, he put the hand holding the plane’s remote control on his hip and pointed the other at Werner.

“You’re a _fish _doctor!” he announced.

Werner blinked at him, ignoring the twist in his gut. “I beg your pardon?”

“Ichthyology! Fish doctor! _Docteur de Poisson_!”

Werner turned and started walking away.

“I looked it up online,” Didier said proudly, keeping pace beside him. When they reached it, he scooped up his plane and wrapped his arm around it. “At first I accidently typed ‘icky-ology,’ but that was close enough. I guess lots of people spell it wrong. Or maybe fish are just icky. They smell icky. My family used to go to the fish market a lot and it always smelled super gross, but if I was good Mama would buy me a raspberry scone from the shop down the street. Those smell a lot better than fish, ‘specially right out of the oven when they’re all warm and gooey. Do you smell a lot of fish when you operate on them?”

“Pardon?” Werner was having trouble following. “‘Operate?’”

“Well, what else would a fish doctor do?”

Werner massaged the bridge of his nose, then ran a hand down the loose skin of his face. Didier looked at him expectantly.

“I wasn’t a _veterinarian_,” he said. He studied the chicken, who strutted along a few feet ahead, indifferent to the goings-on behind her. “I was a scientist. I didn’t operate, I dissected.”

“_Whoa_,” Didier breathed. His eyes grew wide. “That sounds even _cooler_.”

Werner’s mustache twitched. “I don’t do it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I’m retired.”

“Why?”

“I’m _old_,” Werner snapped. “I’m not passionate about it any longer.”

“Why?”

“_Why_,” Werner echoed, “do you keep flying that plane if all you do is crash it?”

His words had the desired effect: Didier flushed and his mouth snapped shut. Werner’s, however, kept moving.

“They say you should get back on the proverbial bike should you fall off it, but that pithy little line doesn’t take into account that the _bike _might be the problem. Would you get back onto the bike if the tire was flat or the chain was stuck? No. You would walk home. And if that bike failed at the wrong time and threw you off of a cliff, I think you’d be well within your right to dispose of the bike altogether._ Sometimes _a failure is too big of a failure.”

Didier bit his lip, looking troubled. “…Are we still talking about planes, _Docteur Poisson_?”

Werner sighed. “I don’t know. And it’s _Doctor_. I mean it’s Werner. It’s Doctor _Werner_.”

They completed the rest of their walk to the bridge in silence. The only sounds were their dry footfalls on the grass and the light twittering of birds in nearby trees, with the occasional car revving down the dirt road to crack through the tranquility. The boy ran his fingers along a dented wing of the toy plane, looking less upset than Werner would have expected. The doctor knew how scathing he could be, and he also thought he had an idea how attached to the plane the boy was. And Werner had basically told him it was pointless to keep flying it. But, if anything, Didier looked thoughtful. When they reached the crest of the hill, he took Werner’s coat sleeve before the doctor could start down.

“_Docteur Poisson_?”

Werner sighed. Again. “Yes?”

Didier’s eyes were clear, determined, and defiant.

“I think people get back on the bikes because bikes are fun.”

And with that, he let go. And turned back the way he’d come.

The trek through Paris was similar this time around, with the exception of the alleyway, which he gave a wide berth by cutting around the front of Alan’s café. He didn’t look through the windows of the shop in case the boy spotted him – he was _not _fond of the idea of running into him again. No one, especially not that brat, was going to get in the way of him finding out where Alice was going. This was the fifth day since he’d first spotted the chicken, and his third day following her. It was already much more time then he’d been planning to spend on this world. He had to get along with things.

But no reason to get along with things on an empty stomach.

For worry of losing Alice should he pause, Werner ignored the main meal Madame Poulin had packed and focused his attention on the eclairs, which he could easily eat as he walked. The path the chicken took through the city was fairly straightforward and though both he and the bird received some strange looks, no chatty individual felt the need to pester him.

Though there were many, many chatty individuals. Scuttling down the sidewalk, squawking into cell phones, cursing out car windows. Werner felt himself folding up at the onslaught of noise and focused on the chicken to keep himself moving forward. Even in his youth, he had never been a fan of crowds. Célia was always the talkative one, the social butterfly. Werner was content to stay at home and read. If it wasn’t for her dragging him out, he would never have interacted with colleges and, quite possibly, never written any books or done any big studies.

_Blaming _her_ now, are we?_

_That wasn’t what I meant_.

Werner ground his teeth and wiped his hands with a napkin. Alice made a left and clucked. He looked up.

They had turned into the greenery-lined walkway outside of the Médiathèque Françoise-Sagan, one of the largest libraries in Paris. And the chicken was heading for the front door.


	9. There’s a Chicken Loose in the Library!

The walkway leading up to the library was flanked by plots of dirt holding bushes in a wide spectrum of greens and a sampling of young oak trees, and the park benches in front hosted an assortment of people out to enjoy the quiet warmth of the budding day. Older couples in deep conversation, children playing impromptu games, university students with their books pulled up an inch from their faces. It was all very… Werner hesitated to say the word “nice.” But he was perturbed by how unperturbed he was, especially when just a moment ago he’d been overwhelmed by the bustle of the full Paris streets.

Alice hopped up the concrete steps in little bursts of flurried feathers and Werner tried to convince himself that the chicken wasn’t about to head inside the library, even though that was clearly what the chicken intended to do.

_Call me narrow-minded_, he thought, _but not matter how “intelligent” Célia claims chickens are, I’m fairly certain they can’t read_.

Together, bird and man reached the library’s door. It was large, set into a sturdy stone frame and decorated in red with the words “Médiathèque Françoise-Sagan.” Werner studied the lettering, waiting. He looked down at Alice. The chicken was waiting too.

“What now, then?” he muttered. “Is this it? We’ve come all this way to stand in front of the library?”

Alice clucked, and Werner was reminded that he was, in fact, talking to a chicken. He sighed.

A strange feeling settled on him, removed from the pleasantness of the library’s outdoor patrons and the muted sounds of tires against asphalt on the surrounding streets. Werner’s conflicting inner voices had been tugging him in different directions since he started this new – for lack of a better word – _project_, and he could feel that silent argument coming to a head.

He had two options: open the door for the chicken, or turn around and go home.

If he opened the door, this was no longer idle following. It was _intention_. The chicken wasn’t moving any longer, he could say that this was where the little excursion ended. There was no big revelation at the finish line, just a closed door and a man with sore feet. Opening the door would be acknowledging that whatever it was he wanted from this whole situation, he did want _something_, because he was determined to keep it going.

If he went home, that was that. He could die in relative peace.

He wished that second option appealed to him as much as it had a few days ago. He was still _ready _he just… had to know.

“All right,” he said. “You win.”

He pushed the large door with a grunt – it was obviously a back door, made of a thick slab of metal, and wasn’t the easiest thing to open – and waited for the chicken to pass.

The chicken didn’t just pass.

Alice _bolted_.

Werner blinked in astonishment as the small, plump bird became a blur of black and white feathers streaking down the library hallway. And in a moment, it became clear why she was in such a hurry.

“It’s _BACK!_” someone yelled. As Alice passed an intersection a young woman wearing a red shirt with the library’s logo turned the corner and started after her. “It’s heading down the hallway, someone cut it off!”

Werner didn’t have time to think about anything but following. The chicken, the woman, and the doctor ran in a line down the hall, passing rows of books and an info counter, until a man in another red shirt planted himself at the end, knees bent and arms lowered like he was about to wrestle.

Alice made a beeline for between the man’s legs, but at the last second skirted around him, turning right instead and heading into the common area. People on computers and browsing books turned with befuddled wonder as the chicken appeared and more librarians joined the chase.

“Is that a chicken?”

“Why is there a chicken?”

“There’s a chicken loose in the library!”

Alice slipped into a fiction aisle and the group spread out to block off either side. Werner, huffing, puffing, and wondering where in the world his lungs had gone, joined the rear of the group. Together the hunting party inched forward to surround the bird, but before they could pounce Alice slipped into a gap between some books on the lowest shelf and moved into the adjacent aisle. The group scrambled around each other, trying to get back out after cramming so many into a tight space. Werner backed up and watched as the librarians came streaming out, all heads on a swivel.

“Where’d it go?!”

“Who’s got eyes on the bird?!”

“There!”

Alice ran along the top of the children’s books counter, weaving between displays of new picture book titles. Several children laughed and lunged to grab her, but to no avail. She hopped down and scuttled just past the librarians as they reformed to continue the chase. One woman realized where the bird was heading.

“Catch that bird!” she cried.

A man in a business suit who had just gotten off the elevator took his phone away from his ear, eyes wide as a swarm of red-shirted, frantic librarians and one old man charged at him. He tripped over his slick black shoes in his haste to get out of the way, and in doing so gave Alice plenty of room to slip into the elevator car just as the doors closed behind her.

Several library patrons cheered as the pursuers reached the end of the hall. The chicken was stuck in the elevator. Game over.

One of the librarians approached, wheezing out of his weary grin. He pushed the elevator call button amid the scattered applause of his compatriots.

But the doors did not open.

He pressed the button again. And again.

“There was a girl in heading up,” the man in the suit said, phone still halfway to his ear. He looked incredibly frazzled.

“WHAT FLOOR?!” a dozen voices demanded. The man took a step back, raising his hands.

“I don’t know!”

A woman at the front of the group ordered the party to the stairs and they trudged upwards. Werner looked at the climb with dismay. Perhaps he’d made the wrong choice after all, because sitting at home with coffee and an éclair sure sounded nice just then. He sighed and started up the steps.

Inside the elevator, a little girl in a yellow and blue polka-dot dress stroked Alice’s soft white feathers, eyes wide in amazement. She was about five, her sunny-blonde hair in two braided pigtails, and had just decided that chickens were her new favorite animal.

The car stopped on the third floor, and the girl gave the chicken one last pat before the two parted ways. She couldn’t wait to tell her mom.

It didn’t take long for the party to find Alice again. The group was smaller than before, as some had gone to search the second floor, but there was still enough to momentarily clog the stairway exit in their rush to get out.

“There it is!” someone yelled, which was perhaps not the best move, because the alerted chicken picked up her pace yet again. As the group came for her, she ran, weaved, and bopped, until she stood on a lounge chair underneath a window overlooking the city.

The window was open.

_Another misconception about chickens_, Célia’s book read, _is that they can’t fly. _

Everyone rushed at the bird, hands outstretched. Alice hopped onto the windowsill.

_As it turns out, they can and do._

She clucked and turned her back on the advancing party.

_The right breed of chicken can use their disproportionately small wings to lift themselves up to about ten feet, and have been known to fly as far as ninety meters. Maybe that doesn’t sound that impressive, but let me ask you this…_

Alice jumped.

_Could you do any better?_

A handful of librarians groaned as they reached the vacated windowsill and watched the white, round form catch the unsteady wind and wobble off into the distance. She didn’t get far, but it was far enough that no one could be bothered to go after her, not even Doctor Werner, who collapsed into a nearby chair.

“At least it’s gone,” a man commented.

“Yeah, it never stays long,” someone else added.

“Good chase,” a woman said, and a few high-fives were exchanged. The group started to scatter.

“Excuse me,” Werner called out to one of them, a lanky young woman with red hair and an unfortunate batch of acne. She turned around.

“Yes, Monsieur?”

“Doctor,” Werner corrected. “How many times have you seen that chicken?”

The girl scratched a spot on her neck. “Oh, it’s been coming here every day for… almost a week now? You didn’t need to join us, you know, we never catch the thing.”

Werner frowned, still breathing heavily. “If you know you won’t catch it, why are you chasing it?”

She laughed. “Well, who’d say no to a good chase? We could all use a bit of fun around here, after everything.”

_Everything? _Werner wondered.

Her eyes darkened, like she’d accidentally reminded herself of something unpleasant. She did her best to hide it behind a customer-service smile. “Would you like some water, Monsieur? You’re looking a little pale.”

“No,” Werner grunted. Then, “Leave me alone.”

“All right, well, let us know if we can help with anything.”

The girl left, and Werner put the bag containing his lunch on the ground so he could massage his knees. When he’d caught his breath, he carefully pulled _Understanding the Minds of Birds_ out from his jacket and rifled through until he found the passage he wanted.

_Chickens don’t _need _to fly long distances_, it read. _They’re primarily creatures of the land, just like us. They can run and maneuver fast enough to avoid most predators because of the extra cone in their eye that detects motion, yet they _still _retain some ability of flight. Basically, they’re overachievers. _

_It’s one of many things that chickens and humans have in common._

Werner closed the book. Once again, the chicken had given him the slip and he would have to try again tomorrow. He stood and stretched, every bone in his body cracking with a sound like weary applause, then grabbed his bag and headed for the elevator.

He had just pressed the call button when he heard a small intake of breath to his right. He turned.

A giant, broad-shouldered man sat behind one of the library’s help desks. His hair and beard were light brown and neatly trimmed and he had on a small pair of reading glasses. Something about him looked vaguely familiar.

“What?” Werner demanded, and the man paled.

“Oh, sorry! I just, ah… I noticed your book.”

The man’s voice was both deep and soft, like his throat was lined with velvet. Annoyed, Werner slipped Célia’s book back into his pocket. “It’s mine,” he said. “I don’t know who you take me for, but I wouldn’t steal from a library.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you did! I terribly sorry, Monsieur, I didn’t mean to insinuate anything! It’s just that’s, um… one of my favorite books.”

That took Werner aback, and he stood up a little straighter, looking at the man with more interest.

“…Really?”

“Well, um… yes.” The man looked like he’d wished he hadn’t said anything, but he swallowed and continued. “I’m, ah, not very scientifically savvy, but her work is more philosophical than I think a lot of people give her credit for? Um. And, uh, very funny. She’s got a lot of charm to her prose. I read that book in school and actually, you know, _learned _something. It’s great. Have you, um… Have you read it before?”

“Yes. Many times, now.”

The man brightened a little.

“Then you know what I mean! She sees beauty and significance in everything but, ah, not in too cheesy of a way? It’s refreshing.”

“She was a very intelligent woman.”

The man nodded. “She was. It’s a shame what happened to her.”

“Yes,” Werner said, “it is.”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Werner didn’t go through.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Me?” The man shook his head. “Sorry, dumb question. Um. I’m Samson.”

“You have good taste, Samson.”

“Oh. T-Thank you.”

Werner’s eyes wandered across the man’s desktop and landed on a vase filled with bright flowers. He recognized those more than the man himself, though he couldn’t remember what they were called.

“Those are… nice,” he said. Samson’s blush was almost immediate.

“They’re ranunculus,” he said. “I got them from this great flower shop just outside of town.”

“Go there often, do you?”

His blush deepened. “Once a week,” he said. “To, um, get new flowers.”

“Of course.”

Werner caught the elevator doors before they could close. “Well,” he said. “Goodbye, Samson.”

“Have a good day, Monsieur.”

Werner didn’t bother to correct him.

With a grunt, Werner took a seat at the end of one of the emptier park benches outside the library. On the opposite end, a curly-haired man worked on some word jumbles. He’d seemed the least-talkative of Werner’s options.

The doctor pulled out the lunch Madame Poulin had packed, revealing a thick turkey sandwich with tomato, sprouts, bacon, and avocado, all on a large croissant. If it wasn’t bad enough that she’d packed him a lunch, she had to go and make it a _good _one. The nerve of that woman.

He was a few bites in when someone else took up the remaining space between Werner and the word jumble man. He didn’t look up. The newcomer leaned over to the other man.

“That one spells ‘deodorant,’” he said.

“Oh!” The man filled in the blank. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Now Werner looked up, because it was difficult to glare at someone when you weren’t meeting their eyes.

“Are you _following _me?” he demanded.

Alan Poulin shrugged and threw his arms over the back of the bench. “Weirdly, no. I’m here for my own reasons. Guess you’re just an easy guy to find. How’s the sandwich?”

“What do you want?”

“Homemade croissant, you know.”

“What do you _want_?”

“I _told _you Gramps, I’m here for my own stuff. But then I heard about the chicken running around and knew you had to be here somewhere. Not happy to see me?”

“No.”

“I’m hurt.”

“Leave me alone.”

“That one’s ‘shower head,’” Alan said to the other man. “What are these, bathroom-themed?”

“It’s hygiene-themed, I think,” the man replied.

“Speaking of which, that one’s ‘hygiene.’”

“_Poulin_,” Werner snapped. “Go.”

“I’m in the middle of a word jumble, Gramps.”

“Then _I’ll _go.”

“Hold up,” Alan said, putting a hand on his shoulder before he could move. Werner shook him off and the boy raised his hands in surrender. “Look, I was just thinking – tomorrow’s my day off. If you want, I can give you a ride so you don’t have to walk all over town.”

“A _ride_?” Werner looked disgusted. “On your _motorbike_? You have to be joking.”

“As shocking as it is, I also know how to drive a car. I’ll borrow my old man’s.”

“I have no interest in spending additional time with an ingrate such as yourself.”

Alan rolled his eyes. “Ouch.”

“Do you know this one?” the man asked, pointing to another scrambled word.

“‘Disinfectant.’”

“Damn! You’re right!”

“It’s a gift.” He turned back to Werner. “It would save you a lot of time,” he continued. “You know where the chicken’s going. You could just meet it here.”

“I’m perfectly capable of walking.”

“So you’ve proven.”

“The answer is no.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Then _leave_.”

“What’ll you do when it’s raining, huh?”

“I’ll bring an umbrella!” Werner threw his sandwich back into the container. “For goodness sake, Poulin, of all of your nosy family, _you _are the last person I expected to dote upon me. I am a _grown man_. If I lose the chicken, I will come back the next day, if an obstacle arises, I will go around it. If a store I pass through is closed, I will… Oh.”

“Oh?”

“Tomorrow is Sunday.”

“Observant.”

Werner pinched the bridge of his nose. “The florist is _closed_ on Sunday and the alleys are minuscule. I’ll have to go around the entire lineup of stores to get to Alice and by then she’ll be long gone.”

Alan grinned, but didn’t say anything. He especially didn’t mention that Werner had used the chicken’s name again.

“Fine,” Werner breathed after a long pause. “I will allow you to… chauffeur me here tomorrow. _But._ There will be no talking. And absolutely _none _of your awful music.”

“Yes, sir,” Alan droned.

“Now let me eat in peace.”

Alan rose, giving the word jumble one last glance.

“‘Microbiological,’” he said.


	10. Seven Sundays

When the chicken emerged from the bush for the sixth time that week, Doctor Werner did not follow. He felt odd watching it cross the street without him, as if he was somehow slacking off, but such thinking was impractical and this situation was, on the whole, for the best. As loathe as he was to admit it, getting a ride from the Poulin boy would make everything a lot easier. They could leave later in the day and still make it to the library at roughly the same time that Alice would, meaning that Werner had most of the morning to do further research while he waited. He even went so far as to poach himself some eggs for breakfast. He slathered his toast with a nice helping of butter, silenced his beeping watch, and let himself grudgingly enjoy the clear blue morning.

Sundays were, he reasoned, meant to be days of rest.

The chicken crossed the street and slipped through the fence, emerging from the wooded area into the cobblestone-lined row of shops at the same time she always did. Most of the stores were closed, their usually bright windows darkened, and the building of the florist, which Alice squeezed past as she moved to the back, was no different.

Gabrielle was busy on Sundays.

She gathered her best flowers, taking special care to include her father’s favorite forget-me-nots, and bundled them up before resting them inside a wicker basket, which she in turn strapped to her bicycle. She threw on a faded red jacket to stave off the chill of the early morning and set off, the thin tires scraping pleasantly underneath her.

Gabrielle would not consider herself a quiet person. _No one _would consider her a quiet person. But she was not such a loud mouth that she couldn’t appreciate the stifled pale-yellow tranquility of a lazy morning, when the air still felt heavy with the moisture of the night before. Every breath made her lungs feel cleaner as she pedaled, and she moved just fast enough to ruffle her short hair in a light breeze.

It was a short ride to the cemetery. She chained her bike up to the metal fence just beside the entrance, grabbed her flowers, and hiked up the hill, her footfalls muted against the grass.

“Hey,” she greeted when she reached the grave marker. “You beat me here again.”

She and her mother looked very similar. The same dark hair, the same round face. The same unfortunate height deficiency. When she’d been younger, just after her dad had died, Gabrielle had been bitter that she didn’t look more like him, even if that would have meant a receding hairline and watery eyes. Those had been her _dad’s _watery eyes, dammit, and with him gone they weren’t around anymore. It was just her and her mom, grieving mirror images of the other, trying to fill up the space he’d left behind.

“Those are beautiful, Gabby,” her mother said, taking the bouquet from her and leaning her nose into it. She smiled and laid them down on the simple rectangular slab, the marble of which had already been polished before Gabrielle had gotten there. The two women wrapped their arms around each other in a side hug, breathing in unison. They stayed that way for a while, each too occupied with their own thoughts for small talk.

It was bullshit, she decided. What people said about loss getting easier. _Easier _wasn’t the right word. It was more like you got used to the needle in your heart, over time, and learned to live with it. Sometimes you wouldn’t feel it at all, and sometimes you shifted just right and it was all you could do to keep breathing. What Gabrielle _could_ say was this: she couldn’t look like her father, but she could learn to appreciate the pictures they still had of him. The little pieces of woodworking he’d left behind, decorating her mother’s living room. The bench he’d made for the flower shop’s back garden, with his name engraved in swooping cursive on the back.

The needle was still there, but so was the heart.

When they were ready, her mother squeezed Gabrielle’s side.

“You hungry?” her mother asked.

“Always,” Gabrielle replied.

They reached the cemetery gate, passing through the archway, and found the sidewalk covered in pigeons, pecking determinedly at a discarded bag of popcorn. Pigeons, of all the birds. It wasn’t a rare sight, but Gabrielle and her mother stared at them for just long enough to let it sink in.

Then they burst into loud, ugly laughter, and the birds scattered at their noise.

Sometimes, against all odds, there was nothing you could do but laugh.

Alice followed the same dirt road past the same green hill, but Didier was not there to almost hit her with a toy plane. Sunday was the only day that he couldn’t sneak away from his parents, because they both had the morning off.

It was a lot quieter in their house, since Louis wasn’t in it anymore. It wasn’t that he’d been particularly loud. More like he’d taken some of everyone else’s noise when he’d gone, and the family puttered on at a lower volume. The sound of his parents’ terse conversation over the status of their bills fell like dull thuds in Didier’s ears as he fiddled with his plane, tightening a bolt holding the landing gear in place.

Across the room from him, Louis’s bed was made and empty. He had a bedspread decorated in a splash of the milky way, and dark blue pillows. On his wall was a corkboard with neat squares of cardstock pinned in careful rows. Louis liked to keep his plans organized were he could see them, the different goals he had easily accessible. The colors of the pins even had different meanings, though Didier wasn’t sure what they were.

Louis liked things tidy. You could pinpoint the threshold where Louis’s side of the room met Didier’s because everything was immediately messier. Old shirts splayed over end tables and headstands, toys reaching hopefully out of corners, socks everywhere but where they belonged. Didier had made an attempt to clean, so that Louis would be surprised when he came back, but it was a fool’s errand. Didier didn’t have the attention span that it would take to excavate his room from the tomb of laundry and half-build Lego creations, and his parents had more important things on their minds than to try and make him.

“Didier!” his mother called up the stairs. “Come on, we’re going to see your brother!”

Didier set down the plane. As always, these words had a conflicting effect on him. He wanted to see Louis, and he didn’t. He had lots to tell him, but he never knew if he was listening. He missed him, but he was right there. What Didier had was an in-between brother. An almost-brother. That was all he’d had for a month now, and the longer it went on the more he worried it was all he’d _ever_ have.

But in the end, he grabbed his notebook with the elastic band that was supposed to hold it closed, but was too stretched out to work properly, and tumbled down the stairs – then tumbled back up to grab a jacket at his mother’s insistence.

Mother, father, and son folded into the car in an atmosphere that did its best not to be grim. Like a light that was just a little too pale to light the room fully. They pulled out of their driveway and eased down the road.

They didn’t have far to go.

After Alice had crossed the bridge into town, she had a smooth trip through the city. As odd as the sight of a chicken parading around Paris was, the people around her were doing their own parading, and didn’t have time to stop and gawk. She passed restaurants and banks and mom-and-pop shops, curving around corners with the same dogged determination she always showed. Passing by a large apartment building, she came close to crossing paths with Samson, the broad-shouldered, broad-faced, broad-everything clerk that Werner had met at the library, but missed him as he reentered the building after taking out the trash. Sunday was his day off.

His days off were surprisingly similar to his days spent at the library, only he was allowed to read more books. His apartment was full of them. Shelves upon shelves of lovingly cared for volumes, dusted and organized, without a single dog-eared corner. They took up most of the space in his bedroom, the small entryway, and his living room, which was where he often found himself.

He settled into his lounge chair in front of the window and thumbed open his current book to the marked page. It was a gothic novel, full of mystery and romance, and he’d rather been enjoying it. But today…

Today he couldn’t seem to focus.

After he read the same paragraph for the third time without taking in any of the information, he gave up and set the book on the end table next to him. He picked up his coffee, nursing it under his chin to let the steam curl up his cheeks, and wondered.

He wondered, and wondered, until his wondering turned to wandering and he set the mug down and stood. There wasn’t much space for pacing in his apartment – there wasn’t much space for _him_ in his apartment – but he made do, maneuvering around furniture as he thought.

His meandering took him to a certain shelf, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d taken out _Understanding the Minds of Birds_.

“Huh,” he said.

Absently, he turned over the cover, opening the book to the dedication page. He’d always liked it. Leave it to Célia Werner to make even the dedication poetic.

_For Braden._

_Don’t be afraid to stick your head in the clouds, once in a while. I promise I’ll watch where you step._

“What’s Monsieur Werner’s first name?” Alan asked, ducking his head through the doorway to the Poulins’ kitchen.

His father paused, his hands pressed into freshly-risen dough.

“Huh,” he said, a little embarrassed. “I’m not sure I know. Amélie!” he called.

Madame Poulin ducked her head through a different doorway, the one leading out to the store.

“Hmm?” she answered.

“What’s Monsieur Werner’s first name?” he asked.

Madame Poulin frowned thoughtfully. “It starts with a B,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

“That sounds right,” Monsieur Poulin agreed. “Why do you ask?” he said, turning back to his son – but he had already vacated the doorway. The man shook his head.

“That boy,” he sighed, but he didn’t sound particularly annoyed.

The Sundays of Madame and Monsieur Poulin were much the same as other days. Both dedicated to their work, they didn’t feel the need to take time off from it. Hugo Poulin loved to bake, Amélie Poulin loved to run the store. Alan Poulin was the breath of restlessness that kept them on their toes, and he was more respectful than he gave himself credit for, even if he could be a pain at times.

“Must have something on his mind,” Madame Poulin remarked with an approving nod, and ducked out to greet a customer. Monsieur Poulin grunted in agreement, and went back to kneading.

Alan Poulin did have something on his mind, and it had to do with Célia Werner’s book.

He had spent the night before and the current Sunday morning reading, which was unusual for him. He preferred loud music to books, and packed concerts to quiet contemplation – but here he was. Researching.

The book itself wasn’t that remarkable. Just a bunch of facts about birds that he didn’t particularly care about, sandwiched between bouts of philosophy. Like it couldn’t decide if it was a textbook or a motivational speech. But the longer he read, the more things came together.

Then he’d had the brilliant idea to google the name Braden Werner.

“What do you know?” he muttered, tapping the touch pad on his laptop to open yet another link.

Werner hadn’t written as many books as his wife, but he was no small name in the weird, niche world of biological researchers. Everything he’d done was over a couple decades old, and too dense for Alan to bother really going through it. He figured the migratory patterns of carp wouldn’t be much help to him.

What _did _catch his interest was the correlation between the year of Célia Werner’s death and the year of Braden Werner’s last research expedition.

Before he could look into it further, a shout came from the store, accompanied by the clang of leather shoes descending metal stairs.

“Poulin!” Werner called. “We must be off! Now! Don’t go proving yourself to be both insufferable _and _unreliable!”

“Charming as ever, Gramps,” Alan muttered, and folded the top of his laptop down, plugging it in before he sidled out of his room. He grabbed the car keys off the peg in the kitchen and shot his dad a two-fingered salute.

“Have fun,” Monsieur Poulin said, waving a floury hand.

“Not likely,” Alan replied, spinning the keyring on his finger, and went out to greet the old man.


End file.
